


Stripped of Circumstance

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Case Fic, Deckerstar Big Bang 2019, F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Mystery, Post-Season/Series 03, celestial drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 18:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20697962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: A day after an incident on a beach leaves fifteen people with no memory, only two have yet to be identified. The first, a thirty-something man with presumably fake identification proclaiming him Lucifer Morningstar. The second, a ten year old girl to whom Lucifer has become reluctantly attached.On the other side of the country Chloe Decker fights through her own celestial-induced fog as she tries to locate her missing daughter. The search lands her in the middle of a cosmic test, the ramifications of which will have consequences for both herself, Lucifer and Trixie.





	1. Quite Plainly Not Jane

**Author's Note:**

> This continues a somewhat baffling tradition of mine where I sign up for a shippy big bang and then write a largely gen story. It's still Deckerstar at its heart, but don't expect more romance than you'd see in a typical episode of the show.

The fluorescents overhead flicker as he cracks open an eye. The hall seems to sprawl outwards, the wall receding as he tries to reach for it.

“Fuck,” a voice says, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, he’s waking up. He’s not supposed to—”

“Push the anesthetic,” someone else counters, the voice clipped and authoritative. “I thought you did the calculations—”

“No accounting for metabolism. And fuck knows the kind of complications from injuries like this.” The first voice again. “Up the dose. We can’t have him waking up before we’ve got him stable.”

He reaches towards the voice, but his arms tug against restraints. A sudden flood of warmth suffuses his veins, a dark blanket swaddling his thoughts and pulling him into the deep black night.

* * *

He slams back into awareness all at once.

He’s alone in a hospital room, his heartbeat hammering in his chest. The steady digital beep takes him a few minutes to trace to a heart monitor beside his bed. He stares in confusion and a second later notices a tube protruding from his arm. He follows the tube to a bag of clear liquid. He sits up far enough to read the label. _Saline_. Common treatment for dehydration, among other things.

_Let there be light_.

He grasps for the memory, but like a fine mist it’s completely invisible when he’s in the thick of it.

The door to the room opens.

He starts violently enough that he almost falls off the bed, but the woman who enters isn’t threatening in the slightest. She’s five foot nothing with a knot of brown hair and black plastic framed glasses. Her a lab coat is too long, hitting below the knees instead of thigh level and a stethoscope dangles loosely around her neck. She grabs a clipboard from the base of the bed, skimming over some notes.

She jumps a little when she realizes he’s awake.

He finds himself smiling at her obvious fluster. A few seconds after, her face breaks into an answering grin.

“Awake,” she observes, the vaguest hints of a southern drawl lengthening her vowels. “Welcome back. You gave us a nasty scare. But your burns have been healing extremely well. Initial assessment had you in much more dire straits, but it looks like you’ll probably avoid skin grafts. Worst of it should be over in a few days.”

He frowns at the doctor and then looks back to his skin. Red and peeling, like he’d broiled alive in the middle of the desert. It brings a certain… he blinks.

Déjà vu.

The doctor continues, “I don’t suppose you remember your name? We got a rush of people presenting with weird side-effects after the incident and the police think you may have been at ground zero.”

“Amnesia seems an odd side-effect, Doctor,” he answers, surprise by the sound of his own voice.

English.

He frowns.

He should have recognized his own accent, but even the language feels unfamiliar on his tongue.

“Accent matches the green card at least,” the doctor muses. “Though I won’t ask about the fake ID.”

“A fake?” he echoes, affronted. He’s not sure of where he is or what exactly is happening, but he’s sure that he isn’t a fake. As for being at a loss, well, that strikes him as complete _novelty. _“I can assure you that I’m not a—”

“Lucifer Morningstar,” the doctor interrupts. “It’s a fake name if I’ve ever seen one. And since your blood panels all came back normal, I doubt we’ve got the Devil living in Hollywood. Unless you can confirm the name, I’m afraid we’ll be keeping you on the record as John Doe.”

He bristles at the implication that he would carry false papers. It would be easy, very easy, to paste on a sheepish grin and say, _Of course that’s my name, my family was religious and Mum and Dad clearly didn’t want children_.

He _could_ say any of it.

But he has no idea if it’s true.

“Confirmed or not,” he decides after a moment, “I rather like Lucifer Morningstar.”

_Light bringer. _He looks at his peeling skin.

It’s possibly he overdid the light.

“Whatever you say, Johnny.” The doctor rolls her eyes.

The action send an aching jolt of familiarity through him. Fondness, he might call it, but effervescent feeling diffuses as he grasps for it. As he chases the feeling, he lets the doctor check his vitals, everything from blood pressure, to pupil dilation.

“Burns look better,” she comments, “but I want you to stay on the intravenous fluids at least for another day. We’d have wanted to keep you for observation anyway. It’s what we’ve been doing for the rest of your memory loss cohort. I’ll be back to check up on you in a few hours. Don’t be surprised if someone from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department stops by with some questions. They’ve been trying to figure out what happened same as the rest of us. They think you might shed some light on the incident.”

“Given the complete lack of memory of the incident,” Lucifer says with a touch of indignation, “I have no idea how.”

The doctor gives him a tight lipped smile. “Join the club. If you do remember anything or if anything changes, you have a call button by your bed, please let one of the nurses know.”

* * *

His police interview doesn’t even merit a detective. Instead he gets a harried ginger patrolman who reads a list of pre-scripted questions from a sweat-dampened notepad. Poor chap doesn’t seem to have the right disposition for Florida given the sunburn and the riot of freckles.

“And do you have any idea what may have caused this?” Lucifer asks, interrupting the scripted questions.

The patrolman falters at the question.

“Come now, I’m told I wasn’t the only witness to this incident. Tell me—” His eyes dip to the name plate on his uniform. “Officer McKegg, what have you learned?”

“The case is still under investigation,” McKegg replies apologetically. He worries the edge of the notebook, making a small tear through the page.

“Surely you can make an exception,” Lucifer presses. “After all, it’s not privileged information considering this is a case that directly involves _me_.”

McKegg’s face twists in sympathy. “We don’t know much. The crime scene was pretty fucking weird. About all I can tell you is what the press already has. There was an incident. Unknown origins. We would have guessed lightning strike except for all of the memory loss. I’ve just been trying to match people with names. And you’re one of the last mysteries. Well, you and the kid.”

Lucifer’s eyes narrow at mention of a child. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

This is important.

It must be important.

“What kid?”

“Only other person we haven’t managed to positively identify. Nine or ten by the looks of her. Kind of mouthy, but cute. Looks a little like you, actually.”

“I assure you, I’d never—” He trails off, before he can finish the thought: _I’d never create one of those wretched creatures. _Because can’t know that. Not when his entire past is a yawning void.

“It’s okay,” McKegg cuts in, completely misreading his distress. “I know you think it would never happen, forgetting your kid, but whatever went off out there doesn’t look like it discriminated. I know they wanted to do a paternity test before introducing you guys, but you know the lab, it takes a couple days. I’ll see if the doctors can make an exception and bring the kid by later. Who knows? Maybe it’ll knock something loose.”

As Lucifer gapes, McKegg pats him on the shoulder and leaves the room.

* * *

True to his word, McKegg brings the child to meet him the next day. She’s small and wiry, with dark hair, dark eyes and an impish smile. She’s dressed in a baggy t-shirt and bright pink leggings, neither of which fit properly. They stare at each other as McKegg shifts awkwardly from foot to foot, sweating through his uniform. He licks his lips and says, “I’m going to, uh, give you some privacy.”

They both watch as the door swings shut.

Lucifer tries to catalog the child’s features, looking for anything that echoes his own face.

The child breaks the silence. “What’s your name?”

“Lucifer Morningstar,” he answers. “At least according to my green card.”

The child’s faces scrunches up. “Like the devil?”

“Apparently so.”

She grins. “Cool!”

He finds himself reluctantly returning the smile. “And what do I call you, child?”

She scowls and crosses her arms over her chest. “I didn’t have a green card and I don’t remember anything so they went with Jane.”

“Jane Doe, I presume,” Lucifer asks for clarity. His own chart lists something similarly tiresome. “They tried to call me John.”

“I hate it,” she says passionately.

“You could always view it as an opportunity,” he says thoughtfully. “Jane Doe is nothing more than a placeholder until you find your true name. I’ve always found the practice of assigning names to squalling infants preposterous. Seems like you should wait until they could approve or disapprove a name themselves.”

That coaxes the smile back to her face and she bounds over to the hospital bed so she can wrap her arms around his waist. Lucifer goes stiff at the action, his fight or flight instinct going haywire. The pressure against his healing burns sends an unfamiliar jolt of pain through him, but he can’t seem to bring himself to chastise the little urchin. Instead, he forces himself to move a hand up to pat her on the top of the head, thinking some acknowledgement of the action could hasten its end.

“The doctors say they think you might be my dad,” the child confides in a half-whisper.

“They said the same to me,” Lucifer admits. “I rather doubt that’s the case.”

The child lets him go, frowning in an over-exaggerated show of thought. “You’re probably right. But I remember a little about what happened. It’s was either right before or right after. There was a light and you got in front of me. You were trying to protect me. So even if you’re not my dad, I think we might be friends.”

“Friends?” he echoes. How in the world does one make friends with a prepubescent that isn’t his own?

“You’re funny,” the child says. “We’re definitely friends.”

Which is… nice.

No, not _nice_. He doesn’t know much about himself but the very concept of children sets teeth on edge. The warm spot the child had left when she’d rudely attached herself to his side lingers. He’s not sure what to make of it. That, or the insidious warmth in his stomach. He nods slightly. “It has been… enlightening to meet you, child.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Lucifer!”

The door swings back open as McKegg pokes his head in, swinging his gaze between the two of them. “Anything?”

“I like him,” the child says. “He’s funny. But we don’t think he’s my dad.”

McKegg’s ruddy face falls. He’d clearly been hoping their meeting would have provided some kind of investigative lead. He licks his lips, obviously grasping at straws. “How can you be sure he’s not your dad?”

Lucifer pastes on a smile. “Well, I’d expect any spawn of mine to be a good deal more demonic. Horns, I think. Maybe a tail.”

“A tail would be awesome!” the child enthuses.

The expression on McKegg’s face shifts from disappointment to alarm, like he’s finally realized that introducing a child to someone whose identification—fake or not—reads _Lucifer Morningstar_ was ill-advised. He puts a hand on the child’s shoulder, steering her back out the door, casting Lucifer a nervous glance.

The child twists to look over her shoulder as she’s ushered out of the room and chirps, “Bye Lucifer!”

* * *

By day two, he’s healthy. Almost alarmingly so considering the half-healed scars and the amnesia. He flips the television to news reports, but they seemed to have already cycled out of the useful reporting and into speculation from random weirdos who wanted to rant about possible meanings of ‘the light.’

He turns it off when someone offers up angels as an explanation, instead settling on a Bones marathon.

The nurses come in, ask him questions he can’t answer and then they leave. The red-faced officer McKegg stops by to let him know that the paternity test showed no relation between him and the child. The knowledge settles strangely in his stomach. He doesn’t want a child, but it would have been nice to have some kind of connection to who he was before. He gets the feeling that no one at the hospital knows what to do with him. No one has come to claim him and releasing an amnesiac onto the streets seems ill-advised at best and irresponsible at worst, but he doesn’t know how long they will be able to afford him a bed.

Later in the night, the nurse pokes her head into his room, her hair falling out of her tight bun, scanning the room. When she notices Lucifer is awake, she says, “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Doe, but have you seen Jane?”

“Please,” he replies, “Call my Lucifer. For some reason, no one wants to acknowledge that my identification clearly labelled me _Lucifer Morningstar_.”

“Fine,” the nurse relents, her voice clipped. “Mr. Morningstar, have you seen Jane?”

“No,” he responds shortly.

The nurse leaves.

He waits a beat.

“How on Earth did you sneak in without my noticing, child?” he asks.

“Waited for you to use the bathroom.” The child sheepishly walks out from behind the curtain divider. “Thanks for covering for me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of covering for you,” Lucifer says. He picks the edge of the burn peeling from his chin. “The nurse simply asked the wrong question.”

After a second, realization dawns on the child’s face. “She asked for _Jane_.”

“Precisely.” He forces himself to stop fiddling with his healing burns and instead toyed with the stiff sheets of the hospital bed. “You are quite plainly not Jane.”

She beams in response and he feels his own face flicker towards returning the smile. “You know you should help me pick one.”

“Excuse me?”

“A name,” she clarifies.

“I am supremely unqualified.” Not to mention flabbergasted by the show of _trust _the request suggests. “I know next to nothing about you.”

“It’s okay.” She shrugs. “I don’t know much about me either.”

He averts his eyes, refusing to feel guilt, but when she takes a few steps towards him, he finds himself making room for her on the edge of his hospital bed. She clamors in next to him, burrowing into his side. Much like the first attempt at hugging, his body goes stiff at the initial contact, but after a few moments, he convinces himself to relax.

“They want me to go to a foster family,” the child says, her voice muffled by Lucifer’s side.

“An unsurprising development. Given the obvious exemption of your memory issues, you’re in perfect health and you’re a minor. I’m told you’re not permitted autonomy until you’re taller.”

“What if I don’t get taller?” she asks, widening her eyes at him. “Do I never get ‘tonomy?”

He starts to answer, but stops when he spots the dimples pulling at her cheeks. _Oh_. She’s making fun of him. He feels a surge of inexplicable fondness. “I’m sure you’re more worthy of autonomy that many adults. So tell me, what do you desire?”

Her face pinches as she thinks it over. And something tugs at the empty place where his memory should be. The expression. It’s familiar. Achingly so.

“If I can’t find my real parents,” she says after a moment, “I want to stay with you.”

He regards her in shock. “_Why_?”

“Because you don’t treat me like I’m stupid. And I think you saved me.” She snuggles closer to him. “Besides. I like you. And I think you like me, too.”

“I suppose your company is tolerable,” he concedes.

She huffs in mock annoyance and jostles him in a way that he can’t describe as anything but playful. “What are you going to do when you get out of here?”

He hadn’t really thought it through, but now that the question is posed, his answer is immediate and obvious. “I suppose I’ll look into what caused all of this memory malarkey. The police has been useless, so I may as well have a go.”

“Like a detective?”

He scoffs. “If you take away all of the procedure and the tedium of paperwork, that’s not an inaccurate description.”

“Cool,” the child says. “Can I help?”

Lucifer doesn’t answer. Can’t answer because he doesn’t want to lie to her. This child is not his blood. He has no claim on her beyond their bizarre situation with their memories. Dragging her farther into this mess would be irresponsible.

Then again, he’d been found unconscious with burns that suggested a defensive posture. Between his wounds and the child’s words, it’s not a bad inference that he had been protecting her. That he should _keep_ protecting her.

Add to that, the growing horror that he actually _wants_ to keep her.

He swallows. “I’m afraid I have no legal way to take you with me.” And as her face falls, he remembers her words from their first meeting and tries a name: “Evelyn.”

She wrinkles her nose, the name distracting her from the disappointment. “I don’t think I’m an Evelyn.”

“Persephone?” he tries.

“Not that either.” She yawns. “Goodnight, Lucifer.”

And then she falls asleep in his uncomfortable hospital bed, her small body nestled into his side.

* * *

He checks himself out of the hospital the next morning, less than an hour after the child is sent to her foster family. He blatantly refuses to acknowledge the coincidence of timing. Officer McKegg brings him a small bag of his personal effects, which are apparently no longer considered evidence. He picks through his wallet, eager to see if he can find an address, but apparently that’s not one of the datum on a green card. It does have a country of origin—United Kingdom—which matches the accent, but feels false on an almost visceral level. It also lists a date of birth. Lucifer Morningstar, the devil himself, born Christmas day, thirty nine years ago.

No wonder the police assumed it was fake.

But the debit card matches the name as well. He doesn’t appear to believe in credit cards, which pleases him. He’s not fond of the idea of being in anyone’s debt, much less the debt of some faceless corporation. His clothes—apparently he’d been found in a suit—had been deemed a lost cause and replaced with jeans and a t-shirt donated from one of the nurse’s husbands. At least his shoes are intact. Polished and black with red soles. He immediately swaps them for the second hand flip flops he’s been forced to wear.

The only personal item is a silver ring with a black stone embedded. He stares at it for a long moment before trying it on his left ring finger.

It doesn’t fit, far too loose. Not a wedding band. It hadn’t looked like one, but the intricate symbol set in the stone had seemed too personal not to check. And perhaps, he admits to himself, step-father would have explained the inexplicable surge of affection he felt any time he saw the child.

The ring settles into place on the middle finger on his right hand. A placement, which is both frustratingly and blessedly free of symbolism. The car key is similarly unhelpful. No unique key chains. Not even a fob that would let him unlock the car remotely. Pity, he’d been hoping he could use the alarm like a homing beacon. As it is, the key is largely useless, but he pockets it anyway, unwilling to part with any tangible evidence of life before he woke up in a hospital. No phone, he notes with disappointment. He certainly doesn’t feel like a Luddite, which means his phone as well as any potential leads as to his identity are as inaccessible as his car. 

He counts the cash he finds in a money clip. Four hundred and sixty five dollars. It’s significantly more than he hoped for and, he suspects, better prospects than most amnesiacs. Despite the windfall, he realizes he will go through it quickly if he doesn’t find out a way to get more. He’s mulling it over when he finds something else buried in the depths of his wallet.

It’s a photograph. He’s not sure how the police had missed it. If they’d found it, surely, they would have questioned him. He unfolds it hungrily, desperate for any new information and feels his breath catch at the woman in the photo.

She’s beautiful in a way that makes his heart stutter. Sharp cheekbones, very blue eyes, precise eyebrows and dark blond hair drawn up in a long ponytail. There’s a smile tugging on her lips, one that looks reluctant, but well earned. Lucifer is sitting next to her and he’s _beaming_, obviously delighted at having coaxed the smile to her lips.

He stares for a long time until a knock on the door brings a nurse with his discharge papers.

“If you’re still sure you want to go, I’ll need a signature,” she blusters. “And if you are checking yourself out, I suggest you rethink your attitude about charity.”

He shoves the photograph into his pocket and accepts the clipboard with his discharge papers. He’s aware of donations that had been collected for victims of the so-called _light_, but the whole thing sounds a bit too alien abduction for his taste and he’s mistrustful of the concept of charity freely given.

He makes a non-committal sound as he skims the papers. The paperwork still identifies him as John Doe even with the identification in his wallet and he finds that error more than enough reason to leave rather than continue this prolonged torture under the guise of hospital care.

He scrawls his name as _Lucifer Morningstar _in a flourish of defiance and hands the clipboard back to his nurse who exchanges it for a stack of prescriptions that he has no intention of filling. 

He turns the ring on his finger and straightens his back. “Right then,” he says with a quick smile to his nurse. “Time to meet the world.”

“Take care of yourself,” she orders. “You’re still healing.”

He scoffs at the sentiment. Where’s the fun in that?

* * *

Out of the hospital, Florida’s air is thick and weighed down by an overabundance of humidity. His nose immediately clogs as he passes a bed of flowers, which feels like betrayal on an even higher level than his memory. He swabs at the slow prickle of sweat on his brow and contemplates his next move. He’d managed to borrow a phone at the hospital, just long enough to map the route to the location of his incident. Only about six miles. A bus ride followed by a walk, he supposed. Rather difficult to hail an Uber without a smartphone.

The incident took place on a beach and when he finally makes it, the dredged sand is an abysmal plague against his feet. It sneaks in around his ankles as the wind kicks it up all around him and rubs painfully at his sockless feet. He ignores it as best he can as he trudges the remaining quarter mile off of the broadwalk and to the crime scene. The crime scene tape has been removed, but there are still some stubborn pieces of yellow clinging to the trunk of the palm tree, flapping madly in the breeze.

He’d been expecting more people, honestly. Bright light followed by fifteen cases of amnesia should have certainly sparked some degree of curiosity, but from what little he’s gleaned about the state, this might be par for the course on levels of weird.

By his standards, at least, the crime scene is _weird. _It’s nestled in a copse of palm trees, far enough up from the beach that the pull of the tide won’t reach until the next hurricane season, so ever-changing sandscape aside, there are still signs.

The cluster of palm trees are in a crude circle. The first things he notices are the charred marks. Under normal circumstances, he’d chalk it up to a beach bonfire, but there’s too much directionality for that, the burns clearly coming from the direction of the sea and splaying out from that one concentrated place.

Lucifer raises a hand to the scabbed over burn. They’d told him he was healing miraculously well, but he’d definitely burned. The child, however, appeared to have escaped, as had the other thirteen witnesses, all their faculties intact except their memory. He walks to the middle of the trees, his dress shoes struggling with the traction on sand. He’s contemplating taking them off altogether when he notices a flicker of something in the sand.

He grabs for it, half expecting to find a beer bottle or something of the sort, but instead he has to keep digging around it, hands hitting wetter and wetter until he pulls out…

“Fulgurite?” he mumbles to himself. “But that’s…”

Fulgurite was a rock formed when sand was introduced to a flash of extreme heat. Most commonly observed when lightning strikes a beach. He glances to the scorch marks on the trees and back to the fulgurite.

There is directionality here, too, but unless he is mistaken, the opposite direction. Like someone had tried to incinerate something and after having done so, tossed it carelessly behind them.

It doesn’t make sense.

He turns the fulgurite over in his hand, watching it throw prisms of light against the sand. There’s something lurking on the edges of his memory, but whenever he tries to look at it directly, it skitters back into the shadows. He makes the conscious decision to stop thinking about it. Better to let the thing lurk, growing larger and larger until it had no choice but to overtake his…

“Lucifer?”

He spins in the sand, trying to identify the source of the sound. He barely gets a chance to say, “Delilah?” before a child jumps into his chest.

He catches her lest she succeed in knocking him to the ground, and uses her momentum to spin them both around before settling her in the sand.

“I don’t like Delilah, either,” she says. “You know, for the record.”

“Very well, Holly.”

She shakes her head vehemently, but she’s grinning.

He sighs in mock frustration. “Perhaps, we can settle for simply, ‘Not Jane’ for now.”

She bobs her head in agreement and sneaks her hands into his.

It’s small and warm, not to mention sticky. He reaches down and gentle dislodges her hand. “Not that seeing a familiar face isn’t a delight, but I was under the impression that you were staying with a foster family. How on earth did you get here?”

“I ordered an Uber,” she says. “There are a lot of kids at the house. She didn’t notice. And you said you were going to be a detective. Figured you’d show up at the scene of the crime.”

“Well done, child,” he says, patting her on the head.

“I can help,” she presses. “Was this were they found us? Was there blood? How about fire? Was that how you got hurt?”

“If the police reports can be trusted, yes. I don’t know about the blood. There’s certainly evidence of a fire which tracks with my injuries, but as far as I can tell, there’s no way to correlate scorch marks with a time frame.”

The child nods seriously. “So we need to keep an open mind.”

“Exactly,” he says and extends the fulgurite towards her.

She turns it over in her hands, frowning. “What kind of weird rock is this?”

“It’s what happens to lightning when it’s exposed to extreme heat.”

“You mean like a fire?”

“No,” he answers carefully. “More like a lightning strike.”

As if cued, thunder rumbles in the distance. On the horizon he sees a dark line of storm clouds marching toward them. As he watches, a bolt of lightning unfurls itself across the sky. 

The child, skittish, presses up against his side, flinching at the sound.

“You can’t possibly be scared of storms,” he chastises. “You see to have dealt with a complete loss of identity with no ill effects, but storms are too much for you?”

“If lightning did that to sand, I don’t want to see what it would do to a _person_.”

“It wouldn’t dare when I’m with you,” Lucifer promises without knowing where the surety is coming from. “But I expect we shouldn’t tempt fate.”

They both leave the beach at a run as the afternoon thunderstorm comes crashing down.

* * *

They wind up at a restaurant a few blocks off the broadwalk, shaking off the rainwater as they are ushered to a booth inside. Lucifer realizes dimly that he should have already sent the child back to her temporary guardians, but her company soothes some of the empty places inside him and he finds himself clinging to the feeling.

He’s more than willing to spare some of his extra funds to prolong the exposure.

A harried looking waitress hustles them to a booth. She has the good grace not to laugh at their near-drowned appearance. They hadn’t quite missed the front rolling through and the sudden downpour had left them both dripping rainwater. The booth is wooden rather than cloth, or at least a laminated facsimile, probably for this very reason. Across from him the child shakes out her wet hair, water arching out from the back of her pony tail to leave thin lines of water on the table.

He slicks his own hair back, the dampness easing its way, but as it starts to dry, the edges begin to curl. Under normal circumstances, he’d attempt to tame it, desperate for some measure of control, but he’s about to spend all of his hair product budget on feeding a child.

“I’m Lilia,” the waitress says more to the child than him. “What’s your name, hon?”

The child’s eyes go wide and she looks to Lucifer in a panic. He feels his gaze sharpen. It’s a question that feels too personal for a rundown diner four blocks off the beach, but he may just be incised on behalf of the child.

“This is Not Jane,” he says, gesturing to the child who gives a small wave. He narrows his eyes, unblinking as he focuses on the waitress. “And I’m Lucifer,” he pauses a beat as the waitress flinches almost imperceptivity. “Morningstar.”

“Right.” Lilia cough, trying to recenter herself as she breaks eye contact. She swings her gaze back to the child. “I guess that makes you the antichrist, huh, hun?”

“Does it still count if I’m adopted?” the child asks.

The waitress laughs as Lucifer sputters.

The child kicks him under the table. She’s right of course. Explaining anything more would invite unwanted questions. And while he’s not comfortable telling lies on top of his unknown identity, he won’t begrudge the child’s desire.

“You two are a hoot,” the waitress says. “What can I get you?”

The child orders a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of milk. Lucifer opts for key lime pie and an expresso. As the waitress bustles away, the child steeples her hands and looks serious at him. “Do we have any leads?”

“Besides the fulgurite and the burns on the trees?” Lucifer asks.

She rolls her eyes in response. “Leads we can use, silly.”

Lucifer stares for a moment and then pulls out his wallet, easing the picture out from its well-protected pace. The child unfolds it carefully, peering close to study the image.

Even upside down it sends a pang through him, the woman’s face, his own wide smile. But now he’s assailed by a different kind of familiarity, because there are echoes of the woman’s face in the child sitting in front of him. The shape of her face, the line of her mouth.

The child must see it too, because she looks up, tears welling up in her dark eyes.

“Lucifer?” she asks with a trembling voice. “Do you think this is my mom?”

“I hadn’t considered it,” he admits, “but since you’ve brought it up, yes, it does seem likely.”

“We’ll find her, right?”

“Child--” His voice is low and solemn, the words powerful in a way he does not quite understand. “—you have my word.”


	2. Kool-Aid Man Crashing a Party

Chloe Decker is missing something.

“This is driving me nuts,” Ella says as Chloe ducks under the crime scene tape. “Seriously I’ve been here since yesterday and it makes less sense the longer I stay. I mean the only thing that even comes close is that one after Pierce with all the feathers.”

Chloe flinches. She’s not sure if it’s at the mention of Pierce or at the mention of _feathers_, though both have her on edge.

Ella’s eyes go wide, noticing her reaction. “Crap, Decker, I’m sorry. I just. I’ve been here all night and this whole thing is really playing with my head and—”

“It’s fine,” Chloe says. It’s not fine. “Walk me through the scene.”

“That’s just it.” Ella throws her hands up in frustration. “The scene is bonkers. It’s not going to make any sense.”

Chloe closes her eyes briefly and things of bloodied feathers and the monster wearing Lucifer’s suit. “Try me.”

Ella nods twice, her ponytail bouncing against her neck. “Right. Okay. Best I can tell the window up there shattered inward. Judging by the angle of impact and the fragmentation pattern this wasn’t like someone throwing a brick. It was like Kool-Aid Man crashing a party. So Kool-Aid Man busts through our second story window and I don’t know, does a superhero landing around here.” She pointed at a small crater in the tile, a slightly frantic glint in her eyes. “Then, Kool-Aid man sends out some kind of shockwave. You can see from the angles all the tables fell that there was a clear point of origin. And the shockwave hits every direction but one.” She points to a table still standing. “There must have been some kind of altercation because we’ve got a fair amount of something that looks like blood but keeps coming up _inconclusive _on our presumptive tests.”

“When did this happen?”

“Yesterday around five.”

Chloe raises an eyebrow. “So there were witnesses?”

“That’s the craziest thing!” Ella says. “I mean I would have expected it to be packed at five. I mean, not to the same degree as the eight AM rush, but definitely not empty. But by all accounts, no one saw a thing.”

“Wait, so the place _was_ empty?”

“Absolutely _not _empty. Security footage confirmed it. There should be at least a dozen witnesses.”

“But the security footage…” Chloe prompts.

“You’re getting it,” Ella says. “The security footage of the actual incident is corrupt. We’re sending it to the digital evidence guys to see what they make of it, but I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

“Show me.”

Ella nods and tugs off her gloves. She gestures for Chloe to follow her past the café’s counter and to a small back room and a laptop. She hits play.

And it’s a normal scene. A café filled with people chatting, eating. There’s a crash off frame, presumably the second floor window breaking. Then the screen burns white. By Chloe’s eyes it’s not a monitor glitch, just something incredibly bright entering the frame. She lets out a breath. “Huh.”

Behind her, Ella shifts her weight from foot to foot, a fist pressed to her chin so that she can nibble on her thumbnail. “Is that a good huh or a bad huh? Because I’m kind of freaking out. See, there’s this big part of me that really doesn’t think that’s a camera glitch or a really epic lens flare. Please tell me you see it, too.”

Chloe looks back to the screen.

To the pure, bright light.

She squeezes her eyes shut.

The Devil exists. _God _exists. There was a literal Goddess on Earth for a year. She’s met an _angel_. And yeah, they all looked normal enough, but if they’re anything like Lucifer…

She wipes the expression off her face as she turns to Ella. “How long has it been since you slept?”

Ella’s eyes skitter sideways. “I’ve been on-call all weekend. This is my fourth scene in two days.”

Chloe nods. “And how much sleep did you get while on-call?”

She holds up a hand, her middle finger pinched to her thumb, making a crude _o_. “Nada.”

Chloe puts a hand on her shoulder. “Go home, Ella.”

“I can’t,” Ella says. “I still haven’t released the crime scene.”

“Ella,” Chloe says slowly. “It’s noon and I know your on-call weekend ended at midnight. They legally cannot make you stay. Besides, people who stay up for two days straight have a tendency to make mistakes.”

“Decker—” Ella draws herself up. “—just because the only logical conclusion is that there was some kind of alien abduction or angelic visitation or…”

“Breathe, Ella.”

Ella does, her chest heaving up and down.

After a second she says, “I’m really tired, Chloe.”

“I noticed.”

She sits down on the edge of the desk. “And I really hate it when a crime scene beats me.”

“It hasn’t beaten you, Ella. You’re exhausted. You’re not at your best. If you go home, get a little distance, maybe us detectives can get you some context, it’ll clear up.”

“You’re right. I mean of course you’re right.” She takes another couple breaths. “I just… give me a minute or two to regain my dignity and I’ll go talk to Evans about handing over the scene. So distract me. Where’s Lucifer today?”

“Lucifer?” She’s not sure if she should be grateful or annoyed that he’s missing a crime scene that reeks of Celestial weirdness. “He actually offered to drop Trixie off. Didn’t even say it was a favor.”

“Isn’t it pretty early for Trixie to be getting off school?”

“Summer break just started,” Chloe answers. “We’ve got her in camp for the week. Lucifer said he could handle the drop off.”

Ella’s exhausted face splits into a grin. “Oh my God. Chloe! You’re doing the test run thing! I didn’t think you were ever going to get to the test run thing!”

“What are you talking about?” Chloe asks. “I’m not doing any kind of test run.”

“Lucifer and Trixie! I know he gets totally squeamish around kids and basically anyone who winds up in his personal space for reasons that aren’t, you know, sex. But he’s getting better! He’s totally gonna nail it! And then…” She gives an over exaggerated wink to Chloe and rolls her hips.

Chloe stares at her. “It’s not a test. Why would it be a test? Lucifer’s been on the list of people allowed to pick up Trixie from school ever since the thing with Malcolm Graham. He can handle dropping her off at camp.”

“Oh yeah,” Ella says. “The Palmetto Street thing, right? That was right before I transferred in. You’ve had him on the list for Trixie that long?”

She thinks of the gun going off and Lucifer lying in a pool of blood.

She thinks of a _deal with Dad_ and how badly she wants to unknow the existence of God.

And always, always, she thinks of the Monster wearing Lucifer’s suit. Her brain still glitching out when she tries to connect the two of them.

“He’s my partner,” Chloe says helplessly. “It’s not a _test_.”

It is _absolutely_ a test.

Three months ago, Chloe Decker found out her partner was the Devil.

One month ago, it finally clicked that he was still Lucifer Morningstar. 

And she knows Lucifer. She’s known him for three years. She knows his character flaws just as well as his virtues. All of that is still there. She was just thrown for a loop by the whole devil thing. It clicked, eventually, that devil might be a job title more than an identity.

Nothing’s changed.

Dan wasn’t around. Maze wasn’t around. Chloe needed someone who could drive Trixie to camp and her mind went straight to Lucifer.

And that’s the test.

Does she still trust him? What’s really changed?

Lucifer had recognized the test, too. She’d seen it in the slight widening of his eyes, the way he skipped past his usual bluster about children’s inherent stickiness and simply acquiesced. She’d considered outlining rules, but she knows rules would only encourage the pair to find a loophole.

_Just get her there safe,_ she’d said.

_Of course, Detective. Your spawn couldn’t be in better hands. _

She thinks he might have understood the implications even better than she did, because while she is absolutely sure _something_ is being tested, Chloe doesn’t know if her, or Lucifer, or some third party yet unknown. And she has no idea what passing looks like, much less failure. She only knows her answer.

Chloe Decker trusts the Devil with her daughter.

“Don’t worry so much, Chloe.” Ella pats her on the shoulder, the contact shaking her from her thoughts. “Trixie loves Lucifer. And Lucifer’s a teddy bear when it comes to Decker women. And when he passes the test, the two of you can finally cut some of that sexual tension.”

The hair on the back of her neck stands on edge. “Yeah, okay, Ella.”

She pushes Ella back towards the crime scene and after a brief exchange with the other forensic tech on scene, Chloe marches her outside and deposits her friend into an Uber rather than let her get behind the wheel.

She pauses before she goes back inside.

She considers _not _going back inside at all.

There’s no body, after all, and she’s a homicide detective.

But over the past year she’s starting to get called in when her colleagues encounter a case that doesn’t have a classification past just plain _weird._

Lucifer’s fault, of course.

For better or for worse. So much of her life right now is Lucifer’s fault.

And she’s ninety percent sure that this crime scene involves angels.

She’s so out of her depth.

“Decker?” Detective Gillis says from the door. “Thanks for coming down.”

She doesn’t know Gillis well. He’s a recent transfer from somewhere on the east coast. _Recent_ recent_. _As in after Pierce. After Palmetto Street. His only context for Chloe Decker is what he’s seen on the job.

(The rest of the precinct stopped openly talking about her when she was proven right about Malcolm. The rumors about her and Pierce died almost the instant she’d complained to Lucifer. The rumors about her and Lucifer, well, those are something different.)

Gillis is tall and broad shouldered with dark brown eyes and a neatly trimmed beard. He has an easy way about him that Chloe envies. She’s never been the kind of person who can settle a scene with her presence, but Gillis radiates calm. “I saw Lopez taking you through the scene. You got any thoughts?”

“No bodies,” Chloe says.

“Come on, Detective Decker.” Gillis’s eyes are amused as they both walk back into the scene. “You don’t need a body to have an impression. What the hell am I supposed to make of something like this? Lopez said something about Kool-Aid Man.”

“Yeah.” Chloe tucks a strand of hair back in place behind her ear. “She’s a little punch drunk. Long weekend on call.”

“And here I was looking forward to tracking down Kool-Aid Man,” Gillis says with one of his disarming smiles.

Chloe forces an awkward laugh. “I don’t really know why you asked me to come here, Gillis.”

He nods to the scene behind him. “Look, I’ve read a lot of case reports. And coming from South Florida, well, I’ve read a lot of _weird _case reports. But even after all of that, the weirdest report I’ve ever read was the Sinnerman Shootout.”

Chloe flinches at the name. No one else talks about it. When she’d been interviewed, she got the distinct impression that the entire Sinnerman incident would be buried. Under normal circumstances, it would have driven her crazy, but knowing what she knows…

Gillis is still watching her.

She takes a deep breath. “You mean the one with all the feathers.”

“The glowing feathers,” Gillis interrupts. “The glowing feathers that disappeared from the evidence locker.”

“The feathers weren’t glowing,” Chloe says. “That’s ridiculous.”

That’s _divinity_. Which is ridiculous on the face of it. It’s not technically a lie.

Lucifer would be so proud of her for finding _loopholes. _

Gillis holds her gaze. “Did you ever look up the surveillance tape from the evidence locker from the time of the supposed theft?”

Chloe shakes her head.

She’d buried all her memories from that day. Changed out her bullet-compromised vest, banishing any thoughts of the Monster (_the Devil, oh God, Lucifer is the Devil_) from her mind. She’d hoped that the rest of the LAPD would follow suit. Dan and Ella certainly had.

But she’s not the only good detective in the LAPD.

The thought should be a comfort.

“No.” She worries her bottom lip with her teeth. “Conflict of interest.”

On so many levels.

A slow nod. “Guess that makes sense.”

Chloe tries to relax some of the tension in her shoulders. “Why am I here, Gillis?”

“You’re here because the footage on this case.” Gillis jerks his thumb towards the room that housed the security feed, his placid features masking the intensity in his eyes. “Well, that looks a hell of a lot like the footage from evidence vault.”

Chloe blinks. She’s not sure of the proper response. If she should be evasive, or surprised, or… “You think there were feathers?”

“If feathers is shorthand for some borderline-paranormal bullshit, yeah, Decker, I think there were feathers.” He sighs and leans up against the building next to her. “And I don’t have a fucking clue how to deal with feathers.”

“I don’t think any of us know how to deal with feathers.” Chloe huffs out a laugh. “With the possibly exception being my partner.”

“Lucifer.” Gillis crosses his arms over his chest. “Right. Did you start working cases with him before or after you became Agent Mulder?”

“I’m clearly Scully,” Chloe retorts.

“Fine, Agent Skeptic.” His words are light, but there’s an urgency to them. “Tell me. What do I do with a case like this?”

“You work it the same,” Chloe says. “Interview the witnesses, track down the perp. Collect evidence.”

“And if I can’t even describe the crime?” Gillis asks.

Chloe’s phone buzzes. She picks it up, distracted.

A body dropped. This scene—divine or not—isn’t technically her assignment. She’s only here as a favor to a colleague.

“Talk to the witnesses,” Chloe says with an apologetic smile. “If they don’t have anything, well, this is LA. I’d bet you have more than one video angle on the shop.”

* * *

The body is an easy one. A boring one. The kind she used to get on the regular before Lucifer wound up as her partner. Drug related. Murderer found covered in blood and holding the murder weapon. Two witnesses, both shaken, but very sure about their identity. An unprompted confession that comes completely free from the semi-coercion of Lucifer’s desire mojo.

Open and shut.

She’s home on time, a chance to enjoy a relaxing evening alone. She cracks open a book that she’s been waiting on, draws herself a bath and starts on a bottle of wine. It’s a nice change from the chaos of her everyday life. No Lucifer barging in on her, no Trixie to entertain. And she loves Trixie to death, but sometimes it’s nice to just get the chance to decompress.

But the tight coil of tension in her back never quite goes away. Not even when she’s polishing off her third glass of wine and belting out lyrics to the Backstreet Boys CD she has playing out of Trixie’s bright yellow boom box.

She’s still missing something.

* * *

She oversleeps the next morning. Trixie almost always wakes her up early, but with her at camp, it’s easy to forget to set the alarm at night. She opts for dry shampoo in lieu of the morning shower. She skips her coffee too and winds up in the precinct five minutes late with a slowly building headache from the lack of caffeine.

On most mornings, Lucifer greets her with a cup of coffee, but he’s not here today. It’s probably one of his therapy mornings. She usually makes use of the quiet to start on her paperwork without distraction, knowing that once her partner shows up, very little of the paperwork gets filed.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t prefer the office with him here. Even if she has to finish her paperwork over the breakfast table at home, she’s never lighter than with the good-hearted distraction that Lucifer provides.

Therapy days are weird, though. Because while her partner is—at times—easily distracted, he also has the tendency to hyper-fixate. And Chloe’s far too much of a detective not to notice the timing of most of his revelations.

It’s almost cute how hard he tries to apply whatever lesson Linda imparted during therapy, like he can make sense of the world through sheer force of willpower. Still, she’s never quite sure what Lucifer she’ll get directly post-therapy; deliberately thoughtful, just short of manic or, on rare occasion, quietly seething.

The morning passes.

Lucifer never shows.

The acting lieutenant assigns her a body just after lunch time. She shoots Lucifer a text with the location, but there’s no response.

Just as well though, it’s another easy one. The crime scene tech, a bland-faced, sleepy-eyed kid by name of John Jones reports the cause of death as drug induced. Given the pinpoint pupils of the deceased and the frothy discharge around the nose and mouth, even Chloe could have figured that part out. She’s unsurprised to find drug paraphernalia in the vicinity. Even less surprised to hear that the presumptive field tests turned back _opiates. _

“We’ve had a couple like this lately,” Jones reports, sounding board. “Known junkies, most of them. We’ll send the samples to the lab, but best guess is some cook changed their heroin mix.”

It’s a good inference. She knows the lab has been getting an influx of heroin laced with fentanyl derivatives. Lucifer had been delighted by a few of them. _You should try this, Detective, _he’d said, _much smoother high. Bloody brilliant. _

_Illegal, _she’d retorted, _fatal. _

_Sure, _he’d scoffed._ For you mortals._

She turfs the case to narcotics and texts Lucifer.

_No case after all. How do you always miss the boring ones?_

No answer. She scrolls up to see the smattering of texts. She’d sent the last four, which is strange for her. Lucifer’s surprisingly good about text etiquette even if he does overuse emojis.

She keeps scrolling until she finds the last block of texts that went without response. All Lucifer’s from right after the Sinnerman incident. The first series all a bunch, less than five minutes separating them:

_Detective, let me know you’re okay._

_You have nothing to fear from me._

_I never lied to you._

_Just tell me you’re safe._

And then, a day later, _Message received, Detective. You won’t hear from me again._

He’d kept his word, leaving Chloe to turn things over and over in her head as she tried to reconcile her partner with the Monster. Eventually she’d arrived at the only logical answer.

If Lucifer and the Devil were the same, then the Devil was not a monster.

Almost a full month after the incident, she’d sent him an address like she always did with the brief note: _Body dropped. You coming?_

He’d beaten her to the scene, his eyes never straying from her as Ella gave them the run down, something like wonder on his face.

She scrolls back to the bottom of the text chain to stare at her unanswered messages. She bites her bottom lip and pecks out another addition: _You’d tell me if one of your siblings was in town, right?_

_No more secrets_, he’d promised more than a year ago. She suspects it’s only recently become truth. And that truth had swung her world off its axis.

Sometimes, the only thing she _desires_ is to but the lid back on Pandora’s box.

She stares at the phone.

No answer.

She sighs, tosses the phone into the car’s cup holder and heads back to the station.

* * *

Dan stops by her desk a few minutes after she gets back, dark circles under his eyes. “Hey, you remember I’m on nights for the week, right? I can’t pick up Trixie.”

“It’s camp week, remember,” Chloe says, shuffling the folders on her desk. “Lucifer dropped her off yesterday.”

Dan goes silent, but he doesn’t leave.

Chloe looks up. “_What_?”

“Really?” Dan asks. “You and Lucifer are really to the point _that he drops our kid off at camp_? After _everything?_”

She narrows her eyes. By _everything_ he means the Sinnerman, Pierce, Charlotte and Lucifer’s knowledge of the connection. “We’ve been through this, Dan.”

“How many free passes does that guy get?”

“Maze was out of town. Our usual sitter broke her leg and can’t drive. Our backup’s mother is in the hospital. How many other people do we trust? I don’t exactly have time to background check someone new right now. Besides, it was only a two hour drive. It’s not like I asked him to take her overnight.”

“Ella,” Dan says after a moment.

“Dan, Ella was on call and now she’s sleeping off a four crime scene weekend. We wouldn’t have wanted her driving Trixie even if she was available. Lucifer’s got it.”

She watches Dan’s face contort and wonders if she should tell Dan. Give him the context he would need to understand. Wonders if she has the right to drag him kicking and screaming into the Celestial Insiders Club. It might help ease his anger over the Sinnerman incident, but he also might have the saner reaction to knowing that his ex-wife trusts the Devil with their child.

Maybe she can ask Amenadiel. Wings have got to be less traumatic that what Chloe saw.

She forces herself to relax her face. “Dan, you know if you need to talk about something…”

“I don’t,” he says and moves away.

* * *

The paranoia that has been haunting her since the weird crime scene in the coffee shop intensifies as she walks into her apartment. She finds herself standing in front of Trixie’s bed, turning Ms. Alien over in her hands.

She falls asleep there, her eyes streaked with tears that she can’t quite explain.

* * *

Ella’s back the next day. Chloe spies her through the window in the lab, her headphones dangling from her ears. Instead of the normal bounce to her step, she’s frowning hard at something under a microscope.

Chloe looks at her phone, pulling up her last conversation with Lucifer, but her last message sits there unanswered and unread: _You’d tell me if one of your siblings was in town, right?_

She looks back to Ella.

It’s not her case. She’s been distracted by assignments the past few days, but Gillis _did _ask for her impressions of the scene.

_I don’t have a fucking clue how to deal with feathers._

While Chloe is absolutely in over her head dealing with feathers, at least she’s got context. She looks down the row of desks for Gillis’s face, but doesn’t find it. He must still be in interviews. She stands and straightens her blazer before heading into Ella’s lab.

Ella immediately notices she has company, scrambling to her feet and drawing the blinds. Chloe raises an eyebrow as Ella tugs the earbuds out and lets them dangle against her shoulders.

“I feel like I’m about to be shot,” Chloe comments as Ella cracks open the blinds to see if her antics aroused any suspicion.

“What? No!” Ella turns back to her. The bags under her eyes are gone, but she looks half-frantic. “You know that weird crime scene from when I was on call?”

“The one with Kool-Aid Man?”

Ella winces. “Kool-Aid Man, while he sounds ridiculous, may still be our number one suspect. But I’m actually more interested in the victim.”

“What do you mean, victim? No one’s reported injuries and there’s no body.”

“The blood,” Ella says. “Or at least the almost-blood.”

“How can something be almost-blood?” Chloe asks.

“I don’t know. But it’s been messing with me for months.”

“This case is, what, three days old?”

“It’s four days old,” Ella pushes Chloe towards the microscope. “But I’ve seen the almost-blood before.”

Ella gestures to the microscope for her to take a look. After a second, Chloe obliges, leaning down towards the eyepieces. She never took past high school biology, but she knows the basic of what a cell’s supposed to look.

What she’s looking at is… not a cell.

She pushes back her chair. “And… where have you seen this blood before?”

Ella stares significantly at Chloe who has to squeeze her eyes shut to escape her gaze.

“The Sinnerman Shootout,” Ella says when it becomes clear Chloe’s not going to voice the connection herself. “This was the stuff on all the feathers.”

“Right,” Chloe says, suddenly exhausted.

Ella’s lips quirk up. “You sound just like Lucifer.”

The comment leaves her flustered, but she fights down her blush. They’d been partners three years. Of course she picked up some mannerisms. “Yeah, well, I’m sure other times I sound just like Dan.”

Ella walks to her lab door and locks it before turning around, her face serious. “You sound just like Lucifer when he’s avoiding something he _doesn’t like_. You’ve been holding out on me, Decker. And I get it. You were gonna marry Pierce and then he tried to kill you and that’s messy and horrible and traumatic, but that crime scene was _whack_. Now, with the same not actual blood on a different crime scene, I’ve got to ask.” She takes a deep breath and points at the microscope. “Is it Lucifer’s?”

“You just said it’s not actually blood.”

“And you’re doing Lucifer’s shady evasion thing now.” Ella throws her hands up. “Decker, I know he wouldn’t leave you to face Pierce alone. Doesn’t matter how bad it got, he’d stay. Because whether you guys want to admit it or not, you’re _it _for him.”

Chloe starts to counter, but Ella cuts her off. “Oh, come on, even Dan and Charlotte noticed the heart eyes. You two went into that thing together. I know your report said he flaked, but he wouldn’t do that. Not if you were in trouble. And, Chloe, I would have let it go, really, you got to take some things on faith, but I can’t anymore. Not with this.”

Chloe closes her eyes and wills her not to ask.

She doesn’t want to lie. She’s so sick of lies.

Ella asks, “Is that Lucifer’s blood?”

“I don’t know,” Chloe answers, hoping she’ll get away with it.

It’s not a lie. Not technically.

Ella crosses her arms. “And the blood from the other scene? On all the feathers?”

“Yes.” Chloe swallows. “That was his.”

Ella nods once, moving to the lab bench to brace her herself. She looks as unsteady as Chloe feels.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, that means either Lucifer is some X-Men style mutant, possibly with wings or…”

“Ella, _stop_.”

Ella continues over her objection, her voice rising, “_Or_ he’s been telling the truth and he’s the actual literal Devil and that is so much worse.”

Chloe steps closer and puts a hesitant hand on Ella’s back. She turns into the touch and wraps Chloe in a tight hug.

“Ella, it’s all right.” Chloe pats her back like she would an upset Trixie. “If he was going to hurt any of us, he would have done that a long time ago. I don’t think anything’s actually changed.”

The more she says it, the truer it feels.

“I’m sorry.” Ella pushes herself away. “It’s just kind of hitting me all at once. Because if Lucifer has been telling the truth...”

“And that’s kind of his thing,” Chloe puts in.

“Then God’s kind of an _asshole_.”

Chloe’s eyes bounce down to Ella’s chest, to the place that used to house her crucifix necklace, but she hasn’t worn that since Charlotte died.

Ella follows her gaze, shifting uncomfortably.

“Look, I know this is kind of a lot to take, but if you want to talk about it…”

“Oh man, I so do not want to talk about it. I want to shove it in a little box and push it to the corner of my mind where it can be unwrapped at a later date, preferably with a few mojitos.” She points back to the microscope. “Why are you not sure if that’s Lucifer’s blood?”

“Because Lucifer’s had a couple run ins with his family through the years,” Chloe answers. “I don’t think most of them were friendly.”

“Right.” Ella squeezes her eyes shut. Chloe can practically see her compartmentalizing. “Okay, because Amenadiel would presumably have the same weird anomaly because they’re brothers. Like actual, potentially biological relations. I need to sit down.”

Chloe pulls out the chair in front of the microscope. Ella sits and bends double so that her head rests between her knees. Chloe rubs a circle in her back.

“He’s okay, right?” Ella says after a long moment. “I’m kind of trying shove all the rest of it in a box where I don’t have to look at it, but Lucifer’s been my friend for like two years and this might be his not-blood on my crime scene.”

“He’s fine,” Chloe says.

“Of course he is,” Ella echoes. “I mean, pretty much any situation in LA’s got to be better than Hell. Oh God, Hell is a real place.”

There is a knock on the lab’s locked door.

“Okay,” Chloe says as the door handle jiggles. “We’re going to have to talk about this later, probably with a lot of alcohol, but right now, I think we’ve got to get to work.”

Ella nods a few times and stands back up, grabbing her lab goggles from her desk, probably an attempt to mask the tears pooling in her eyes. Chloe raises an eyebrow in her direction as Ella settles back behind the microscope.

“I’m okay.” Ella’s voice quivers. “Really. I can hold it together.”

Unconvinced, Chloe pulls the door open anyway, shifting her body to make sure Ella has a few extra moments hidden from view.

“Decker,” Gillis says, his eyebrows bunching together.

“Ella’s gonna need a minute,” Chloe says.

Gillis graces her with a thin-lipped smile. “I was actually looking for you.”

Chloe blinks in surprise and slips out of the lab, pulling the door shut behind her. “Of course. I’m sorry I haven’t been available to assist with your case. How’s it going? Any leads?”

“I took your advice,” Gillis says the ghost of his grin gone. “Checked security footage from the surrounding buildings to find out if we missed any witnesses.”

“And…” Chloe prompts.

“You need to see it,” he says, steering her toward his desk where the security footage is cued up.

Chloe looks over her shoulder questioningly, but Gillis reaches past her at taps the spacebar to start the video.

It’s a street level view, not the best resolution, but it catches the front of the café in the upper left corner of the screen. She watches for a moment, the bottom falling out of her stomach.

Because she can’t say for certain considering the high angle, but the man walking into the shop is tall and dark-haired, wearing a three piece suit in a dark green. He’s talking animated to someone on his left, a child, judging by the size. They’re not holding hands, but it’s clear the child has a fist full of his suit. And though Chloe can’t see her face, she recognizes the colors on her backpack.

Trixie has the same one.

She pushes back from the computer.

“Decker?” Gillis asks. “That’s your partner, right?”

“Yeah, it sure looks that way. He was…” She takes a deep steadying breath_. _“He was doing me a favor. Dropping my kid off at camp.”

Gillis frowns. “Did you confirm with the camp that she made it safely?”

“Why would I?” Chloe asks, but even as she says it, she knows the words are hollow. She’d made Lucifer promise to call her as soon as he got Trixie settled. And every time Trixie went to an overnight camp, she’d call. “I would have thought they’d call me if there was any issue. And I try not to helicopter parent.”

She’s had something nagging at the edges of her memory for days, but her conscious brain had staunchly refused to look at it. She’s not someone who _forgets_.

Only none of the customers in the café had been able to articulate what they’d witnessed.

Her gut churns.

“Decker,” Gillis asks. “Are you okay?

Chloe forces herself to find her voice: “You’ve got them coming back out of the shop, right?”

Gillis shakes his head, a hesitant hand coming to rest on her shoulder. “Not that we can see. In fact, these two are the only customers unaccounted for. That is, unless you’ve heard from them.”

Chloe thinks of her unanswered string of text messages as she looks back to the video. Lucifer and Trixie walked into that coffee shop. Something had happened. Something… divine.

“No,” she says aloud.

The Devil is missing with her daughter.


	3. Rain of Toads Cases

They check into a hotel for the night, the child bouncing on one of the double beds. Lucifer turns his nose up at the surroundings. It seems sand has permanently infused in the carpet. He doesn’t want to consider what stains the dark colored comforters might hide.

He’d have preferred a better hotel, but with his funds already diminishing and the child in tow, he’d opted instead for a budget conscious one. He motions for the child to settle down and picks up the phone.

The child kicks her legs out in front of her on the next bounce and lands on her bottom, bobbing up and down a few more times before coming to a rest. “Who are you calling?”

“If you must know, I’m attempting to ascertain your foster family’s phone number.”

She slaps a hand over the receiver. “I don’t want to go back.”

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. “Did they harm you?”

The child crosses her arms. “No.”

“Did they neglect you?”

Her face dips into a pout. “No.”

“Did they do anything to put you in danger?”

“No.”

“Right.” He reaches out and lifts her hand off the receiver. “Then forgive me if I’d rather not be arrested for kidnapping.”

Her lip quivers, her eyes welling with tears. When he finds himself reaching for her, she scrambles backwards off the bed and into the bathroom where she slams the door shut.

Lucifer stares after her for a moment and then picks up the phone.

Twenty, infuriating minutes later, Lucifer slams the phone back into its cradle.

“Bloody hell,” he mutters. “Has the entire police department gone mad?”

He runs a hand through his hair and tries to push the conversation from his mind, instead turning to the closed bathroom door. He knocks twice to no response. He tries the handle to find it locked. He considers it for a minute, a whisper of something in his mind that tells him he might be able to _persuade _it to open anyway.

He shakes his head and sits on the sand crusted carpet instead.

“Clara,” he tries.

No response.

“You know eventually I’m going to have to use the restroom and then this gets really awkward.” He tips his head back against the door. “Not to mention _boring_.”

Another long moment of silence.

“You haven’t snuck out or something have you, Larissa?”

“Not Larissa,” the child says after a moment. “Or Clara. Not that it matters if you’re trying to get rid of me.”

He drums a hand slowly against the carpet wrinkling his nose at the grit. “That’s not what this is.”

“You called them to take me away.”

He bites back his frustration wondering if she’s deliberately misunderstanding the situations or if it’s just a facet of her underdeveloped mind. “I wasn’t calling to get rid of you. But in most cases human authorities dislike the idea of misplaced children. I have no desire to go to prison. Which is definitely where I’m headed if I absconded with you. Or, at least that was what I thought.”

No response, but there’s a shuffle and he can imagine the child shifting closer to the door.

He lets out a quick breath through his nose, almost but not quite a laugh. “Turns out, the police have no record of a Jane Doe release into foster care in the last twenty four hours. Rather like they have no record of a John Doe. Honestly the whole thing was rather suspicious.”

The door behind him opens. He turns to look over his shoulder. The child’s eyes are red, her cheeks stained with dried tears.

“Tantrum is not a good look on you, Penelope.”

She shakes her head at the name which is just as well. He’d known that one was wrong as soon as it passed his lips. Her hands are balled in fists. “I don’t have to go?”

“No one’s looking for you,” Lucifer says carefully. ”Which, I suppose, means you are free to do whatever you desire.”

“That’s not how it works for kids,” she counters. “I have to do whatever the adults say.”

Lucifer spin himself around, looking at her seriously. “That’s how it works with me.”

She nods. “Then I’m going to stay and help you find Mom.”

He reaches out to adjust the collar of her shirt. “That was always the plan, child. I just had to make sure I wouldn’t be arrested first.”

Her face splits into a wide grin and before he can brace himself she wraps her arms around his neck.

The force of it nearly knocks him over, and he finds himself wrapping his arms around her in response, wondering how he’d managed inherit this ridiculous creature.

Then again, if no one else remembers either of them, maybe the child’s right to cling to what she has left, even if it’s him.

Maybe he’s right to do so as well.

He stands up, the child still in his arms and stride to the bed farther from the door where he peels her hands off his neck and drops her into bed. She bounces, twice, giggling. The blasted child is a roller coaster of emotions. He can scarcely keep up.

“You should rest while you have the chance,” he says.

“I’m not tired.”

Lucifer picks at the edge of his scarring burn. “Well I am, and I expect you leave me to it for at least a few hours.”

The child pouts. “What am I supposed to do until then?”

He sees her point. There are no toys in the room and the television’s slow drone wouldn’t be conducive to his rest. He casts his eyes around the room for inspiration, but the only thing he finds is a notepad and a pen, which he doubts is of sufficient. He opens a few of the drawers, looking for other ideas, but the only item in any of them is the red bound Gideon’s bible.

He hesitates, looking at it, something tugging at the edges of the hole where his memory should be. He resists the urge to examine it farther and grabs the bible, the notepad and the pen, depositing them in a stack on the child’s bed. “Here, amuse yourself.”

She picks up the book by the cover, holding it so the pages dangle open. “The bible?”

“Number one all-time best seller,” Lucifer says. “You’ll have to let me know if you think it belongs in fiction or non-fiction.”

* * *

He wakes with a start early the next morning, the dawning sun shining in through a crack in the blinds. He blinks against the dazzling light as the AC unit wheezes itself into being. He looks to the bed next to him. The child’s asleep on top of the covers, face planted in the bible.

Rather than wake her, he goes to the bathroom and showers. There are rings around the shower’s base and discolored places along the mirror that makes him turn his nose. But he suffers through it because it’s nice to feel clean again, even if he has to put on the same pair of clothes.

Back in the room, the child still sleeps so Lucifer picks the pillow up off of his bed and tosses it at her.

She wakes slowly, rubbing her eyes.

“Boring read, then?” Lucifer says, pointing at the bible.

“There’s a lot of big words,” the child concedes. “And the chapters are really long.”

“Not a resounding recommendation, then,” Lucifer says. “But I suppose you can bring in along if you want to. But come on, we’ve got things to do.”

“You’re okay with me stealing a bible from the hotel?”

“Someone left the blasted book there to start with. It’s meant to be taken.”

The child shrugs and puts the book into her backpack. Lucifer catches a glimpse of it settling next to the piece of fulgurite as she zips it up and asks, “Where are we going?”

“Police station,” Lucifer says. “We could start our investigation from zero, but I suspect that the police have managed to gather some information. Even if we may have to redo some of their work.”

She clutches her backpack to her chest. “You’re not going to leave me there?”

“Not unless I will be thrown in jail for failing to do so,” Lucifer says carefully.

She seems mollified by his words and follows him wordlessly out of the room.

They take the bus to the police station. A few of the women riding the bus give him appreciative glances and one of them slips him a phone number. Midway through their ride with the child dozing against his arm, an old woman wearing a babushka tells him he has a beautiful daughter and he’s too baffled by the comment to respond.

He shakes her roughly awake when they get to the right stop, herding her out of the bus. The station is in eyeshot, but the stubborn creature plants herself on the sidewalk. Lucifer doesn’t notice she’s missing at his side a couple steps, but then he turns to look back at her. “Come along now, child. Like I told you. Places to be.”

“What’s the plan?” she asks.

“Plan?” Lucifer echoes. “I was going to go and offer the police my services. I should think they have as much as vested interest in solving this case as we do.”

The child shakes, her frizzy pony-tail bobbing side to side. “They won’t tell us. That’s now how the police works. They won’t talk to random people off the street.”

“I would have thought that exactly the goal of their little enterprise,” Lucifer says. “Helping strangers off the streets.”

“Lucifer,” the child groans, drawing out his name. “They’re not gonna talk to you if you don’t have a plan.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, neither willing to back down.

Lucifer relents before she does. “I intend to ask for Officer McKegg. He was far more forthcoming than the detectives. Even the one who took the proactive step to introduce the two of us.”

“He’ll send me back to the foster family.”

“The one who didn’t miss you when you were gone?” Lucifer feels a twinge of regret when her eyes go glassy. “Don’t worry, Rachel, I can make an excellent case as to why you should never be allowed back there.”

“Not Rachel,” she says.

“I’ll add it to the list.”

* * *

The urchin is right, dropping Officer McKegg’s name affords them slightly more respect that the normal citizen off the street. They’re ushered to his desk to sit while someone goes off in search of _Craig. _

“His name is Craig McKegg?” the child asks.

Lucifer huffs. “And you were disappointed by the chance to name yourself.”

She beams back at him, swinging her legs as she sits, her limbs too short to properly reach the ground.

Officer McKegg greets them a few minutes later, his uniform disheveled, the top couple buttons undone to reveal a stained white undershirt. His hair is greasy with sweat, hanging, unstyled in stringy red clumps. Beside him the child gives him a skeptical look.

McKegg sets down his pile of papers as he circles he desk. His face is face arranged into an expression of feigned interest. It’s not particularly convincing. Even the poor chap’s freckles looked exhausted.

“What can I do for you two?”

Maybe the exhaustion’s the reason it takes Lucifer a few seconds to realize the utter bizarreness of their situation. He looks sideways to the child to see if she’s noticed it, too, but she has her head tilted down, like she’s trying to appear as unobtrusive as possible.

“I’m Lucifer,” he says after a long second. “Morningstar. Did you really not recognize me, Officer McKegg?”

McKegg squints a little harder, swabbing some of the sweat from his forehead. “Look, if Knightly put you up to this because I’ve worked nothing but rain of toads cases for the past few weeks, I’m over it.”

“I assure you, nothing about my presence is a joke.” Lucifer feels his hackles rise.

“Then your folks hated you nearly as much as mine hated me.”

Beside him, the child sneaks a hand into his, squeezing lightly. Lucifer tells himself not to look, but he feels the rush of fondness. Whoever he used to be, he doubts he got much support.

“Yes,” he says dismissively. “However, I suspect your records would have listed me as John Doe.”

“And the kid?” McKegg asks. “Jane, I presume.”

“She’s not particularly fond of that moniker, but your records likely list her as such.”

Something in McKegg’s face clouds. “You know filing a false police report is a felony, right?”

“What did you mean by rain of toads?” the child asks.

Both Lucifer and McKegg turn to stare at her, but she stares back, eyes unblinking.

After a second, McKegg coughs. “You get a lot of weird cases in South Florida. I had a guy last week who tried to rob a bank holding a severed head for hostage. A kid threw a snake through a drive through at Burger King like two hours ago. I’ve only been on duty for six months and I think I’ve been cursed by six different self-proclaimed witches.”

“Cool,” the child says.

McKegg presses a hand briefly to his forehead.

Lucifer cuts back in. “I’m afraid, we may be related to one of your rain of toad cases. The spat of amnesia earlier this week?”

McKegg shuffles forward in his seat. “You have information about the _light_? Because the detective is about to close the case with the case as _weather related phenomena._”

“That’s a thing?” the child asks with a frown.

“You’re the one who was reading the bible earlier,” Lucifer says back. “It hardly seems strange in that context.”

“It’s not biblical!” McKegg says with enough emphasis that two of the officers at neighboring desks stare at him. He flushes and lowers his voice. “Thirteen people were on the scene of the supposed incident and not a single one remembers anything past a bright beautiful light.”

“Fifteen people,” Lucifer corrects.

“What?”

“Fifteen people,” Lucifer repeats. “Myself and the child were there. We were only recently reunited, you see. Shared interest and all of that.”

“I’m sorry.” McKegg’s eyes narrow. “Who exactly are you again?”

“We’ve already been through this rigmarole.” He leans forward, bracing both hands on McKegg’s desk. “I’m Lucifer Morningstar.”

The earlier recognition has disappeared from McKegg’s eyes, what little intelligence the man had gone with it. His face sets in that way cops have when they’re done entertaining harebrained theories. And while Lucifer doesn’t want to know _why _that look is familiar, he does know what it means.

“I think we’re done now,” McKegg says.

“Oh,” Lucifer purrs. “We are far from done, Craiggy.”

McKegg stands, his hands on his belt. Not on his weapon but rather a Taser. Lucifer has the sudden insane urge goad McKegg into shocking him.

“A police station is by far the last place you want to be making threats.”

“And if I’m the Devil himself?” Lucifer counters. “Does that not afford me a certain amount of leeway? After all, we’re on the same team. Both in the business of punishing the wicked.”

McKegg’s fingers twitch.

The rest of the station has gone silent.

A small voice says, “Dad?”

Lucifer turns to his side, the power draining from his voice. The girl is bent double, clutching her backpack to her stomach, her face screwed up in discomfort. “I don’t feel so good. Do you think we could go home now?”

“But we’re not _done_.”

“Oh we’re definitely done,” McKegg snaps. “I don’t know if you’re a reporter or a freak from one of those paranormal blogs, or what, but you’re clearly wasting police time.”

Baffled, Lucifer stands. The child follows suit, leaning heavily into his side. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating but…”

“Look,” McKegg says, “it’s fucked up you took your kid into a scam. Whatever you’re doing, you should be looking after her and not chasing something you’ve never been a part of.”

“Very well.” Lucifer looks around the precinct. They’re suddenly a much bigger source of attention than he’d hoped and all of the eyes make him nervous. He places a hand on the child’s back. “I should have known this would be a foolish endeavor. I won’t seek your assistance anymore.”

They leave the police precinct with no escort, but many, _many_ pairs of heavy eyes on their backs. The child hugs her backpack tightly to her chest instead of swinging it over her shoulder and doesn’t stop moving until they’re two blocks away from any possible police surveillance.

“Well,” Lucifer says, “That was certainly an illuminating conversation.”

“They don’t remember us,” the child says, her earlier discomfort evaporating. Feigned, he notes appreciatively. She certainly is a resourceful little thing. “Even though we were _there. _And since they don’t remember, they won’t help.” 

“That certainly seems to be the case.” Lucifer pinches at the side of his wrist, a nervous tick, muscle memory looking to adjust… something. “Never worry though, we’ll start our own investigation.”

He trails off as the child slowly lowers her backpack. Clutched to her chest is a thick manila folder stuffed with paper. She offers it to him, sheepishly.

He flips it open to find the first item is the photograph of the beach, the copse of burned trees along with a page about weather conditions. Farther back are lists of names and interview transcripts.

“I saw it on the desk,” the child says. “And Officer McKegg didn’t seem like he wanted to help us so...”

“You stole it,” Lucifer finishes.

“I stole it,” the child confirms, her head bowed like she expects him to yell.

He flips through the pages, farther into the file where he finds his own report in black and white. Unknown white male, late thirties/early forties. Alias _Lucifer Morningstar_, birth name unknown. And behind his page, the child’s. Proof that they were both involved in the case no matter what the police may remember.

He looks back to the child and her trembling lip.

“Oh,” he says softly, “well done child!”

* * *

Thirteen witnesses to their case, their home addresses scattered up and down Broward County, but there are at least a couple close enough to the precinct that they wouldn’t have to stray hard. He picks out the name of the closest person on the list, a Gertrude Peabody.

The child wrinkles her nose at the name and he can’t help but tease her, “Were you hoping to claim the name Gertrude for yourself?”

“It’s an old lady name,” the child says. “Even Jane is better.

“Ah, but I suppose you are still Not Jane.”

He laughs at her responding glare.

The Peabody house is modest, but close enough to the beach that it must have cost a fortune. There are two cars parked in the driveway despite the garage. The child seems more interested in the orange tree in the front yard, she strains for one that looked ripe, just out of her reach. He reached up without thinking to grab the fruit and handed it to her before heading to the door.

He rings the bell once, waiting until a young woman with curly, dark hair opens the door. Her eyes widen slightly when she takes in Lucifer who smirks at her, taking the look as attraction.

The child elbows him in the side.

“Right,” Lucifer says. “Hello there, we would like a word with Gertrude Peabody. Who I presume is your... grandmother?”

The woman’s body language closes off. “You want to talk to Gert?”

“Very much,” Lucifer says. “If you could fetch her for us, that would be lovely.”

At the mention of an _us_ she eyes the child at Lucifer’s side. Her eyebrows bunch together. “Okay, so you’re definitely not police because I doubt there’s a take your kid to _interrogation _day.”

“How rude of me,” Lucifer cuts in smoothly. “I’m…”

He swallows the next words in a huff as the child stomps a flipped-flopped foot over his toes. He turns to her, outrage fading into shock as she says, “I’m Jane Doe and this is my dad, John. We’ve been looking for Mom.”

“Jane and John Doe,” the woman says skeptically.

“Well, according to the hospital papers at least,” Lucifer says, fishing the photograph from his wallet.

The woman says, “Shit, you were in the amnesia crowd. Like Gert was.”

“Excellent. We’re in the right place after all.” Lucifer claps his hands together. “It’s really quite imperative that we talk to dear Gert. We must find the child’s mother after all, so if you could just go fetch your grandmother, we can…”

“Gert’s my _girlfriend_, not my grandmother. Jesus.” The woman steps outside and closes the door behind her.

“Jesus has nothing to do with this, dear,” Lucifer says. “And good for Gert snagging a younger woman.”

“I’m older than Gert. Her parents were just old fashioned. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go talk to her.”

Lucifer bristles. “And who are you to deny her that _choice_?”

She glares in response. “Leanne Williams. I’ve been living with Gert for two years and taking care of her ever since she got back.”

“I’m sure she’s very lucky,” Lucifer says sarcastically. “To have become entangled with a _jailer_.”

“Look, she doesn’t remember anything.” Leanne glances to the child. “Not about me, not about her family. And I’m sorry, really I am, that you can’t find your wife or Mom or _whatever_ but Gert doesn’t _remember_. I don’t want you stirring all the trauma back up.”

“If she reacts to the trauma, it’s likely the incident I’m interested in is still there,” Lucifer presses. “So how about we all head inside.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Leanne almost shouts. “You ever think of that? Maybe there’s no reason to remember. Maybe the only way to figure out who you are is to forget everything else.”

“Are you quite mad?” Lucifer says. “Forgetting robs you of everything you are! Context! History!”

Leanne takes a step back, almost pressed into the wall as Lucifer advances.

“Stop,” a small voice says.

“I’m calling the police,” Leanne says.

“Go ahead,” Lucifer crows. “I’d be interested to watch them try and…”

“Lucifer, stop! You’re being _mean_.”

Lucifer stops.

The child’s eyes are filled with tears. He bends down so he can look her in the eyes, smoothing a piece of hair back behind her ears.

The door behind them clicks shut. Lucifer hears the sound of a deadbolt being thrown.

“Child,” he says and lets the word hang there, not quite a chastisement.

She stares back, her dark eyes watery. “We can’t _make_ her help us find Mom.”

He can, though. Lucifer knows it in his very bones. He can persuade the door to open and march inside the house, pushing past Leanne Williams to interrogate the reportedly youthful Gertrude Peabody. He can compel answers from the unwilling, perhaps even discover what really happened on that beach.

But the child next to him is a shackle. A weight on his conscious. If he sends her away…

…well, if he sends her away, this would all be over a lot faster.

He waffles, briefly, _pointlessly_.

Then he stands.

There was only ever one choice.

“I suppose there are others on the list,” he says. “Hopefully ones with far less controlling girlfriends.”

* * *

Thinking she might have better luck, Lucifer lets the child pick the next name.

Martin Keen lives only three blocks from Gertrude Peabody in a small pink house. The yard is filled with browning grass, clearly Bermuda grass that had been purchased but not watered sufficiently to stay green and spread. The soil between the squares is sandy, but at last the two palm trees manage to cast some semblance of shade. Lucifer swabs at his forehead inexplicably baffled to find it wet with sweat. He shakes the dampness from his fingers as unobtrusively as he can and raises a fist to knock on the door.

No answer for a few minutes.

“Maybe he’s not home,” the child says. Her earlier tears have dried, but she the prospect seems to please her.

Lucifer has already capitulated to the whims of the child once today. He refuses to do so again.

He tries the door.

There’s the slightest hint of resistance, but then it gives way. He pushes it open, calling, “Martin!”

“He saw the same thing we did, didn’t he?” the child says, stepping carefully inside. “He might not remember his name either.”

“Right,” Lucifer concedes and raises his voice. “Man potentially known as Martin Keen?”

He can almost hear the child’s eye roll as he creeps farther into the house. The place is in disarray. Papers on every flat surface, dirty dishes in the sink. Must have eaten something sweet for breakfast because a small line of ants are marching from one of the bowls. There is a TV on just past the kitchen, the voices loud enough to be audible but not understood.

From deeper inside the house comes a crash.

The child yelps and plasters herself to his side. Lucifer cups a hand briefly on her shoulder and then pushes her behind him. He draws himself up, arching his shoulders as he reaches for…

Something. He’s reaching for something that _isn’t_ _there._

A man stumbles off of his couch, slipping on what appears to be a pile of newspaper. He’s _haggard. _Wearing nothing but a threadbare white bathrobe. His stubble is several days old, but too patchy to be considered a beard and his eyes have a sunken desperate look to them.

“Who are you?” he demands.

He waits a beat to see if the child will chime in, but when she doesn’t, he goes with his own truth. “I’m Lucifer. Lucifer Morningstar. And you, Mr. Keen were witness to a rather bizarre event.”

“Oh my God.” Keen’s eyes wide. “It’s you. You were there.”

“I was,” Lucifer says, advancing slowly.

But instead of backing away, Keen takes a shaky step towards him, his eyes wide, his pupils blown. “I thought you were dead. He took the light out of you. He took it and he _threw it away_.”

Lucifer stops, his brow furrowing. “Light?”

“He called you brother.” Keen’s voice shakes. “You knew him.”

“Brother?” Lucifer echoes.

“Tell me who it is?” Keen demands.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Lucifer glances behind him to the child and shifts so that she’s shielded from Keen’s view. “It’s the trouble with the whole amnesia jam.”

“I need to see it.”

When Lucifer blinks, Keen’s on top of him clawing at his clothes like he’s trying to get to Lucifer’s soul, his very core.

“Please,” Keen sobs. “I need to see _him _again. I can’t survive if I don’t.”

And Lucifer, too shocked to do much more, and unwilling to hurt the man, puts his arms up defensively, and tries not to listened to the panicked shouts of the child or the distant whir of sirens.


	4. Raze Heaven

Chloe’s world narrows to a single harrowing fact. The Devil has her daughter. The Devil is missing with her daughter. Trixie is gone. Disappeared from a crime scene so weird, it has to involve something _biblical. _

“Decker,” Detective Gillis says. The surveillance video is still open on his laptop. “Are you okay?”

_No_. How could she be? Trixie is gone. Her daughter entered a crime scene and never left. She clears her throat. “I need to make some calls.”

To the camp, to _Lucifer_. To confirm things she already knows.

“Right. Of course.” Gillis nods slowly. “But when you’ve done your checks, you’ll have to make a decision.”

“About _what?_”

Gillis crosses his arms and stares her down. “About how you want me to report this, Decker. This kind of Houdini Act is not _normal_. We’ve only got two people on this video unaccounted for and no bodies on the scene. I need to know if you want me to issue an amber alert.”

Amber alert. A _child abduction_. The Devil has her daughter.

For a second she can’t speak.

Gillis hasn’t blinked since they started the conversation. “Decker, by all accounts your partner can handle himself and has a bit of a… cavalier approach to a dangerous situation. Only we didn’t find any of Lucifer’s blood on the scene.”

Except Ella _did_. It just didn’t track as human blood. The _only_ blood on scene belonged to Lucifer.

“Lucifer didn’t do this,” Chloe says.

The name throws a jagged disconnect in her cycling thoughts. The Devil is evil, but Lucifer Morningstar is her partner. Lucifer has saved her life, not to mention Trixie’s. Lucifer is intermittently childish, narcissistic and a royal pain in her ass, but he’s also insightful, thoughtful and charming. Back before the Monster, before Pierce, she’d had these moments where she would look at him and think…

_Oh shit, he might be the love of my life. _

She’s spent the better part of the last six months trying to convince herself that wasn’t true.

“Decker.” Gillis’s voice is soft. “At a certain point, I got to look at the simplest solution.”

“You don’t know him,” Chloe says. “If Trixie’s in trouble, Lucifer’s either dead or protecting her. And you should be working on how to save them _both._”

The alternative, like the Monster wearing Lucifer’s clothes, is something she refuses to consider.

“Right,” Gillis says. “Take a minute, make your calls.”

She takes a long shaky breath, brushing past her colleagues in her haste to get out of the building. Gillis obviously thinks she’ll change her mind about the Amber Alert. She’s not entirely sure he’s wrong. Her mind screams it at her. But her gut and her… other decision-making mechanisms not born of logic rebel at the thought.

The sunlight dazzles. One of LA’s perfect, cloud-free afternoons. She pulls out her phone and scrolls through various e-mails before she comes up with the contact for the camp where Trixie is supposed to be staying for the week.

Her call doesn’t go quite how she expects. The camp doesn’t have Trixie. But more than that, the class doesn’t have Trixie on their _roster_. Chloe wants to hang up, but the investigator in her does not let her stop. Ten minutes of conversation gets her to the point where the woman admits her payment had been processed and that the waitlist meant she would have been called if her child did not make the first day of camp. She’s given assurances that she will be refunded and Chloe wants to scream.

She doesn’t care about money right now.

She calls Lucifer.

“If you hurt my daughter,” she hisses to voicemail, “I’ll make what God did to you look like a love tap.”

God, who threw him from heaven and let him burn.

God who is real and… Is not someone who can help her find her daughter. Chloe squeezes her eyes shut, blows out a shaky breath, and dials a more useful contact.

Maze picks up on the first ring. “What do you want, Decker?”

She hasn’t talked to Maze since the night with Pierce. She knows that she’d been working with the man. Knows that she’s betrayed Lucifer. Knows that she’s a demon.

But Chloe is also absolutely sure that Maze would do anything for Trixie.

“Trixie’s missing,” Chloe says.

Maze appreciates blunt. She always has. No beating around the bush. No pleading. Facts. She can keep this to facts.

“Say that again.” Maze hisses, her voice low and dangerous. A chill runs down Chloe’s spine at the tone.

“Trixie’s gone,” Chloe repeats. “Last sighting was a couple days ago. Her and Lucifer were spotted on surveillance entering a café.”

“The one the police were at?” Maze asks. “Entire square mile reeked of divinity.”

“Witnesses didn’t see anything. Security camera recorded a disturbance. A light.”

A long pause. “If Lucifer was with her, she’s fine.”

Hearing it from Maze, from a literal demon, shouldn’t bring her comfort, but something of the tension coiled in her stomach unwinds.

Maze says, “I’ll call you when I’ve got something.”

The phone disconnects.

Chloe slips her phone into her pocket, rearranges her face into an emotionless mask and heads back inside.

No one is looking at her. Which is strange considering her daughter had turned up on one of the only promising leads in what was at the moment the precinct’s weirdest ongoing investigation. She doubles her pace and winds up at Dan’s desk. He looks up from his work.

Chloe doesn’t bother with background. She’s sure that Gillis talked to Dan well before consulting her on the case. That was the way things worked around her. “Tell me you’ve heard from Trixie.”

“She’s at camp.” Dan squints at her.

“I just called the camp,” Chloe says.

Dan stands. “You said Morningstar dropped her off. You _said_ he had it covered.”

“Have you heard from Lucifer, then?” Chloe asks.

A flat stare in response. “Why would I have heard from Lucifer if you haven’t?”

“Dan, Lucifer’s not the point.” Frustration bubbles in her chest even if the statement is more than fair. “I don’t give a shit about Lucifer right now. Trixie never made it to camp. Have you heard from Trixie?”

His face clouds and, oh, something is very, very wrong.

Dan says, “Trixie’s at camp.”

Like his brain is shorting out. Like he can’t physically make the connection. Chloe takes an involuntary step backwards, almost stumbling at the edge of the carpet.

Dan stands up, his hand outstretched as if he were close enough to steady her, but the desk was in between them. She could see Trixie’s school photo propped up on the side of his desk, the only one facing outward because, as Dan had confided once, very early in their relationship, he liked to be able to see her from the briefing room. She knew he had several more next to his computer monitor.

“Chlo,” Dan says. “Are you all right?”

“No.” She hears her voice break. She _hates _her voice breaking. “No, I’m really not.”

Dan, like he still does sometimes, reminds her of why she’d married him in the first place. He doesn’t rush to her side, doesn’t make a scene, but he does move so that his body is between her and the rest of the precinct. In a soft voice, he asks, “What can I do?”

Chloe takes several long breaths and blinks until the tears recede. Dan watches her collect herself, the lines of tension never quite leaving his face. When she’s ready, she locks eyes with him and says, “Talk to Detective Gillis.”

That only deepens the lines of confusion and worry in his face. “Chloe...”

“I can’t explain this to you right now,” Chloe says. “I… I need to go.”

A dozen strides later, she pulls the door to Ella’s lab shut behind her.

A second later, Ella reaches past her and locks it. Chloe sinks to the floor, her back against the wall and buries her face in her hands. She’s always been a good detective. Level-headed in a crisis, decisive even, but she’s not sure she can handle this much.

When she looks up, Ella’s dancing nervously in front of her. Her lab goggles are pushed up past her hairline, some of her hair escaping her ponytail’s stranglehold. “Chloe,” she says, “I’m freaking out here.”

“Wait your _turn_,” Chloe says. “It’s definitely my turn right now.”

“Yeah, okay.” Ella keeps looking at Chloe and then back to the microscope. “We might have to share because, if I’m right, hoo boy, it’s like cosmic world-bending bananas. I mean—”

“Trixie’s missing,” Chloe says.

Ella cuts off mid-sentence, her eyes wide.

“Lucifer was supposed to be taking her to camp, but they caught them on a surveillance video going into that café, but not coming back out. They must have decided to stop for some reason. And now Gillis is asking me if he should put out an amber alert and…”

“I’m so sorry.” Ella swoops Chloe into a tight hug. “If I can do anything let me know. I haven’t got a huge list, but I’ll try to see if I can get any more security feeds. And I can definitely put some eyes out for Lucifer’s car. You know, people who might not respond when the cops put out a BOLO.”

Chloe steps out of the hug, nodding. This is good. She should be thinking like a detective. Like someone who has the tools to solve this. She can’t afford to be anything else.

“Thank you,” she says.

Ella’s face twists. “Don’t thank me yet, because you are super not going to like my freaking out thing. Because I swabbed a bunch of stuff from this scene that I thought was blood only, _surprise_. Not actually blood. Which, okay, we get stuff that only looks like blood a lot more often than you’d think. Except, this particular almost blood. Well, I’ve only ever seen it once before.”

Chloe stares at her, not comprehending, because they’ve already done this. Chloe _knows _they’ve already done this.

“At the Sinnerman Shootout,” Ella finishes. “On the feathers. And I get to thinking…”

“It’s Lucifer’s blood,” Chloe says faintly. “Trixie’s _gone _and the scene is covered in Lucifer’s blood.”

“Shit,” Ella says. “Shit, are you sure? Because you were supposed tell me I was nuts. Because this is _nuts. _Because if that’s Lucifer’s blood, Chlo, he’s not human and if he’s not human…”

_Then he’s exactly who he always says he is,_ Chloe finishes for her in her head_._

Only, they’ve had this conversation. Not the same version, but close enough. This isn’t a revelation and Ella’s brain moves far too fast to get caught in a loop of denial and rediscovery.

“Ella,” she says carefully, “you already know all of this.”

“That Lucifer is the Devil?” Ella’s voice hits a hysterical note. “Nossir, Lucifer is a _method actor_. And one of my best friends and…”

“And he’s hurt,” Chloe cuts in. “If you’re right, that’s blood and he’s hurt and he’s got Trixie.”

“Hey.” Ella runs a hand up and down Chloe’s arm. “Lucifer loves that kid. I mean she makes him super uncomfortable, but that doesn’t change things. If anything wants to get to Trixie, they’re going to have to go through the _actual Devil _to make that happen.”

Chloe nods, trying to clear her head. Base on the crime scene, it’s very likely someone _tried_ to go through Lucifer. And for someone with functional immortality, the list of things that can do that are vanishingly small.

She’s very glad Maze is already out looking.

“You’ll reach out to your contacts, right?” Chloe asks.

Ella stares blankly at her.

“About finding Lucifer’s car?” Chloe prompts.

“Of course,” Ella says. “All over it. I’m sorry I’ve just been distracted. There was this weird stuff on the crime scene that looked _almost_ like blood and I know I’ve seen it before.”

Chloe takes a step back.

_“You tell everyone,” she’d said, After. “Why not prove it?”_

_Across from her Lucifer picked a piece of invisible lint off of his suit, not quite meeting her eyes. “Humans have a bit of an unpredictable reaction to divinity. Some of them go quite mad. Others are likely to drop down and worship. Dear Dr. Linda couldn’t speak for almost a day after she saw my Devil face. And, well, it seems I’ve made acquaintances here. Friends, even. People I do not want to see broken, even if it means they never believe me.”_

_“I didn’t break.”_

_“No,” Lucifer says. “No, you’ve always been rather resistant to my charms. And, conversely, you’ve always been rather blind to my greater faults.”_

_“I thought you were an ass for the first two months we knew each other,” Chloe snaps and then recoils. _

_Afraid. She’s still afraid._

_She _hates_ being afraid._

_Lucifer starts to reach for her but pulls his hand back. “Detective, you were among the first besides my siblings who knew me enough to judge me. And well, I expect the jury’s still out on where you stand.”_

_Chloe opens her mouth to counter. _

_Lucifer puts up a hand to wave it off. “You have to realize, Detective. That even the chance to see someone react to me without the trappings of heaven and is a miracle. You are a _miracle.”

“Chloe!” Ella says. “Seriously, are you listening?”

Chloe shakes herself out of the memory. “Ella, something really weird is going on.”

“Right!” Ella half-shouts. “The whole scene was _bonkers_. The guys in digital evidence swear nothing messed with the security tape but they also can’t account for what could have caused that level of distortion. And then there’s all the _not blood_.”

“Ella,” Chloe says very carefully. “If the blood isn’t blood. You shouldn’t be looking at it.”

Because humans react unpredictably to divinity. And divinity clearly doesn’t agree with Ella.

“Of course,” Ella waves a hand. “I mean there’s so much else to process. It doesn’t make sense to waste time on something that has no evidentiary value.”

No evidentiary value.

Lucifer had bled.

On a crime scene he’d been to with Trixie.

“Just… put out feelers to your contacts, okay Ella? I need to find Lucifer’s car at very least.”

“Weird and borderline stalker, but sure, Decker. You know I’ve got your back.”

Chloe unlocks the door to the lab, grabs her purse from her desk and keeps walking right out of the building. Her phone buzzes. A text from Maze.

_Your bad guy’s an angel. _

An angel is the bad guy. She almost laughs.

But she can’t laugh because Trixie’s gone.

_How sure?_ she texts back.

The answer comes almost immediately. _Pretty fucking sure._

She leans against her car in the parking garage and texts back, _Can an angel hurt lucifer? _

Another near-instantaneous response: _you saw what they did last time. _

She puzzles at it for a moment before the connection his her. The Monster. The one in Lucifer’s suit with red skin that looked almost like…

Burns.

Chloe’s breath hitches.

Had he burned?

_Any sign of them? _she texts even though there hasn’t been nearly enough time for Maze to track down the leads they need.

She gets an answer anyway.

_Not in LA._

Chloe takes a shaky breath. Fuck. Her life was crazy. Trixie was gone. Her suspect was an angel. The actual Devil had bled all over the scene. Trixie…

_Lucifer, _she thinks desperately. She doesn’t want to call it praying, not even in her head, but she thinks the only way she knows how to pray is in desperation. Maybe the only way anyone can pray._ Make sure she’s safe. You better keep her safe._

“Chloe!” a voice calls.

It’s Dan, half-jogging to meet her.

Chloe braces herself for another onslaught. She doesn’t know if she can take information about their missing daughter not quite sticking in Dan’s brain.

Dan says, “There’s something going on with Detective Gillis.”

Chloe’s face pinches. “Wait… what?”

Dan inclines his head towards the car like he’s afraid they’ll be overheard. Chloe nods tightly and gets into the car, not saying another word until Dan pulls them out of the station and onto the open road.

“Okay,” she says. “You need to explain.”

“After the whole mess with Pierce, you know how I got kind of paranoid?”

Dan had gotten _beyond_ paranoid. He still spends most of his days waiting for the next thing to go wrong. “What’s your point?”

“I called in a favor to a friend down in Broward and Detective Art Gillis? He didn’t exist before he moved here. It’s like showed up fully formed. In fact, the only person I’ve ever seen with papers this good are…”

“Lucifer’s?” Chloe says.

“Yeah,” Dan confirms. “And I know you like the guy, but Lucifer is and always has been into some seriously shady shit.”

Another connection she doesn’t want to make. She’s seen Lucifer on a surveillance tapes before, looking very much like a human. Whatever was on the video seemed a whole lot more ethereal. She detoured them off the roadway, her driving suddenly with more direction.

Dan notices. “Where we heading, Chloe?”

“Crime scene,” she says.

Dan nods.

Because despite all the years and fights between them, they are almost always in agreement about a case.

* * *

The café had opened in the days since the scene had finally been released. There is still a shadow cast by the boarded up window on the second story, but otherwise, it’s perfectly functional. Dan and Chloe arrive in the lull after the morning rush. They stand next to each other in line, but don’t really talk. The silence is grating in a way it never used to be. Somewhere along the way she’d gotten used to Lucifer’s running commentary.

When they get to the front of the line, Chloe announces herself as LAPD and fishes out her phone.

She has more than one picture to choose from, but she winds up going with the first one she has safe. From the game night they’d had back before everything changed. Trixie with her toothy smile, her arm over Lucifer’s shoulder. Lucifer looking only mildly uncomfortable at the contact. He had a lolly-pop dangling from his lips rather than the usual cigarette, the unicorn designed Trixie had painted on his cheek present in a cheery white smudge. “Have you seen these two?”

The barista, whose nameplate read Kendra examined the picture, her face breaking into a smile. “Oh yeah, I remember them! Super cute. We don’t get a lot of kids coming in with their dads.”

Beside her, Dan bristles. She puts a hand briefly on his shoulder to settle him. “We think they might have been present for the disturbance here earlier in the week. Can you confirm or deny that?”

Kendra’s face fogs. “Look, I went over this with the other detectives. The whole thing was super weird and I literally don’t remember the incident.”

She can practically feel Dan vibrating with rage beside her, but he holds his tongue. She puts a hand briefly on his elbow, but it does nothing to calm him.

It would have calmed Lucifer.

“Tell us what you do remember,” Chloe says, gesturing back to her phone. “It might help to focus on the two of them.”

The person behind them in line groans. “Just order and get on with it already.”

Dan whirls around, badge in hand. “Give us a minute okay.”

“Please, Kendra,” Chloe implores to the barista. “Anything you remember will help.”

“Kid was trying to order a double shot of expresso. Dad was trying to talk her down. Got the feeling they were gonna compromise on something sweet but decaff. And then there was the crash and then, well. Then everything went white.”

“But between that,” Chloe says. “Can you remember anything about the man? Did he seem surprised by the sound? Scared? Angry? _Resigned?_”

Kendra screwed up her face, her eyes closed. “He didn’t run. I don’t even think he flinched. Everyone was trying to dodge the broken glass and he just…”

“Adjusted his cufflinks and turned around.”

Kendra nods.

Dan mutters, “You’re leading the witness.”

It’s such a painfully _Charlotte _thing to hear.

Chloe ignores it. “Did he say something?”

“I couldn’t really hear him,” Kendra whispers. “The light, you know, it was so bright, it was almost _loud_. Does that make sense? I feel like that doesn’t make sense.”

Chloe presses. “But you he said something, right?”

“I think so.”

Chloe squeezes her eyes shit and plays her hunch. “Was it something like _Hello, Brother_?”

Dan seizes her by the shoulder and tugs her out of line, but not before she hears the affirmative answer.

She shakes his hand off her, fighting the urge to grab for her gun.

“Dan,” she warns, voice low and dangerous. “You do _not _get to touch me like that.”

Dan raises his hands in deference and takes a step back, but the frustration is still plain on his face. “You think this has something to do with Lucifer’s psycho family. And Trixie was with him. Jesus, Chloe.”

She bites back an inappropriate snort of laughter, brushing by Dan in her haste to get out the building. She gives herself a full body shake and glances to her phone. Nothing from Lucifer. Nothing from Maze.

She’s been avoiding this for months. Maybe even years if you count the time she hadn’t believed Lucifer’s identity. But her daughter is gone and she’s all but confirmed an angel is to blame. Lucifer is more likely to answer a text than a prayer, but Lucifer is not the only angel she knows.

She’d gone to church once with Ella, After. She’d been out of place. Always a half-second late to kneel or stand. The ritual of it had itched uncomfortably at her sense of self and during the readings, she’d wished that Lucifer was there with her, whispering commentary in her ear.

Lucifer himself had a more practical answer when she’d asked. “_Just pick one of my siblings and aim, Detective. I can’t promise any of them will answer, but you’ll have better luck with them then Dad.” _

_“And what about you?” she’d pressed. _

_“I’ll answer if am able,” he’d replied, picking an imaginary bit of lint from his collar. “Though if you’re in danger, it’s likely I’ll be right there next you.”_

“Chloe,” Dan calls.

_Lucifer, _she thinks. _Lucifer, I need you to bring Trixie back._

Like the last time she’d tried, there’s no answer.

She hadn’t expected one.

_Amenadiel, _she prays, switching tactics. _Amenadiel, Lucifer is gone and he has Trixie. All the evidences seems to point to one of your brothers so you better get your ass down here and…_

Behind her she hears a rush of feathers.

“Holy crap, Amenadiel,” Dan says. “Where the hell did you come from?”

Chloe spins around and pushes both hands against his chest, but trying to move Amenadiel is like trying to push through a brick wall. After the briefest paus he allows her to back him into the brick façade of the building, but she can tell that his acquiescence is a falsehood, a way to pass for human.

“Probably Heaven more than Hell,” Chloe says, with barely a glance to Dan. “Where’s Trixie?”

“Chloe, seriously?” Dan says. “Why would Amenadiel…”

“Was it you?” Chloe demands.

“How could you think I would do anything to harm your daughter?” Amenadiel fixes her with his usual calm stare. She feels the weight of it, the power. She supposes, that for most people, it’s like a balm on their soul. Chloe refuses to let it settle her nerves.

“You’ve tried to harm Lucifer more than once,” she spits. “But if you don’t want to talk about Trixie, fine. Let’s talk about Lucifer. Because I’ve put them both at the scene. And I’m not exactly sure what divine intervention looks like, but it sure as hell seems like _this._”

Dan steps closer, gently pries Chloe’s hands from Amenadiel’s grip. “Dude, I’m sorry about this, but how about you tell us where you’ve been and we can get this taken care of.”

“I’ve been home,” he intones, “back in the Silver City.”

The euphemism sets a fire burning in her veins. She jabs a finger into Amenadiel’s chest. “Tell me what’s going on, or I swear to God I will find one of Maze’s blades and I will shove it up your ass.”

“Easy, Chloe,” Dan says.

Chloe’s been afraid for a long time. Since she saw the Monster. If she’s honest, she had moments before that. She’d glimpsed Lucifer dozens of time, flashes of red in his eyes. Suspects who screamed as soon as she turned her back. And she’d never _looked_.

She’s not scared anymore, at least not of _that_. She doesn’t have the luxury to do anything but face it head on. 

“Start talking, Amenadiel, or I will find a way to raze heaven.”

He lets out a soft huff of air, not a laugh, but something close. “You remind me of my brother sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Chloe growls. “Punishing the wicked, right? Dispensing justice. We don’t always agree on what people deserve, but more often than not, I’m on his side.”

The Devil’s side.

Amenadiel seems almost _pleased_ at the revelation. “Lucifer has been a source of great debate these past few years in the Silver City. My siblings have watched with interest. When he was cast down...”

Dan gives a snort of derision. Chloe shoots him a look of reproach.

“See, when Lucifer was cast into Hell for eternity, it was assumed that he was corrupt,” Amenadiel continues, “evil. Right down to the core of his being.”

“He’s not,” Chloe breathes.

“I know that,” Amenadiel says. “You know that. Recent events have caused the rest of my siblings to reevaluate their preconceptions and a question emerged. Has the very nature of the Devil changed? Or is it just an illusion created by circumstance?”

“Crazy metaphors aside,” Dan says. “That’s all any of us are. A product of _circumstances._”

But Chloe doesn’t believe that. She never has. Sure, there are some people whose situation make it hard, but she’s met people born with every privilege who wind up dead in a gutter, kids born to drug addicts who make it through college.

A man who spent the majority of his life in Hell and still knew how to be _kind_.

“What did you do?” Chloe asks.

“It wasn’t my doing, Chloe,” Amenadiel says, still infuriatingly earnest. “Luci and I were never close before, but over these past few years, I have come to understand him. I would have not have wished this on him.”

Chloe’s eyes flicker briefly skyward.

“They stripped him of the _circumstance_, Chloe,” Amenadiel says. “They took out every piece that made an angel, that made him the devil. I suspect they even carved out his memories. And what would be left…”

“Is his true nature,” Chloe finishes.

Amenadiel nods. “And with nothing else to go by, an angel will wind up where he truly belongs.”

Heaven or Hell.

She’ll lose him either way.

The loud smack rings out in the street before Chloe registers that it came from her. Amenadiel doesn’t seem to even register the blow. Dan grabs her and pulls her away from the angel before she has the chance to do more.

“Trixie was with him!” Chloe shouts. “How is that part of the plan?! She’s my daughter. Not some part of a _test_.”

“Detectives,” a new voice says. There’s a long pause as they all turn to face him and the voice takes a puzzled tone as he adds, “Amenadiel.”

“Detective Gillis,” Dan says, his face creased in puzzlement.

Gillis ignores him. “Amenadiel you should not be here. None of the humans were supposed to remember this incident.”

“And what exactly do you think that means, brother?” Amenadiel pushes past Dan and Chloe.

It’s a motion Chloe’s seen more than once. One she’s done more than once. A way to protect a civilian from a threat.

A way to protect a cop from an angel.

“What the fuck is going on?” Dan hisses.

“I didn’t account for the Miracle. It was an oversight. Nothing more.”

Gillis takes a step forward. Amenadiel shifts to block his path.

“Move, Brother.”

“No,” Amenadiel says calmly.

There’s the rushing sound of feathers and then a part of wings sprouts from detective Gillis’s back. Sleek, brown and lethal. Chloe feels a sudden flood of sympathy for the rodents who die in a rush of talons and feathers.

Beside her Dan crumples to the sidewalk in a faint.

Amenadiel turns and the whole world slows. He gives her a smile, soft and reassuring, everything an angel is supposed to be.

“It means,” Amenadiel says lowly. “There is a third choice. But Chloe, _he can’t know that_.”

“What?” Chloe breathes.

Amenadiel places a hand on Chloe’s forehead and for a blissful second, all of her worries evaporate.

She’s not exactly sure what happens next. She thinks something must hit Amenadiel in the back, because the gentle press of a finger on her forehead is suddenly the full force of the heel of his palm. The contact destabilizes her, sends her careening through space. She feels her body rebel, like it might spontaneously flip inside out. She thinks she might be screaming.

* * *

She wakes up on a beach.


	5. Scramble

Lucifer sits on the stoop of Martin Keen’s house, watching the police presence swirl around him. He’d been treated for superficial scratches, the wounds dressed and bandaged. The child had called the police when Keen attacked him and he keeps a watchful eye on the girl as one of the officers interview her. When she makes a move back to him, the officer steers her away.

He’s lost her.

Perhaps it’s what he deserves.

He stares at the seams in Keen’s grasp, turning the confrontation over in his mind. He’d been attacked by someone he recognize. By someone he called _Brother. _The knowledge gnaws at him.

What kind of person is attacked by his own family?

Or, he thinks sharply to himself, what kind of family attacks one of their own.

He rises, moving towards the child.

A cop puts a firm hand on his chest to stop him.

“Ah,” he greets. “Officer Rain of Toads.”

Officer McKegg gives him an unamused look. “You’re a piece of work, aren’t you?”

Lucifer gives him an insincere smile. “I got you a _lead_.”

“You brought a _kid_ into a dangerous situation. A kid who’s not yours.”

He fights back a flinch at his words and deliberately dos not respond. The longer he’s spent in the urchin’s presence, the more he’d doubted. They might not be blood, but after finding the picture of the girl’s mother, stepfather is an ominously likely scenario. “The incident on the beach was not random and it was not a weather-related phenomenon. It was a deliberate calculated _attack_.”

“Yeah,” McKegg says, “And what was stolen? Memories? What do I even do with that?”

“You punish the perpetrator,” Lucifer replies. His voice has dropped to something low and dangerous, dripping with power.

He… doesn’t _like _it.

“No,” McKegg says. “You don’t do shit. You put your _life _together. You find some support. You move on.”

“A task much easier with a past, a social security number, and any marketable skills.”

“I’m sorry, man,” McKegg’s voice softened. “There are some programs out there to get you back out on your feet, but you _can’t _do something like this. And a revenge bender? It’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

He gives a dismissive snort, eyes trained on the child a few yards away. “She asked me to find her mother. The police, you understand have been spectacularly unhelpful.”

McKegg follows his gaze. “I’m going to be blunt with you. If that kid hasn’t already been claimed, it’s unlikely anyone’s looking for her. ”

“You’re implying that the child is unwanted.” Lucifer feels himself grow cold. “That’s not _true_.”

“Well.” McKegg shuffles his feet, looking anywhere but his face. “You would have done well to think of that before you took her into a situation like this.”

“I found a photograph,” Lucifer says. “Of a woman we believe to be the child’s mother.”

There’s a flicker of interest in the surprise on McKegg’s face so Lucifer pulls out the photograph and hands it to him.

A second later the look fades. “That’s Chloe Decker,” he says.

“Chloe Decker?” Lucifer repeats. The name tastes familiar on his tongue. “That’s marvelous. Do you know her? Can you put us in touch?”

“She was the lead actress in Hot Tub High School,” McKegg says, just a little embarrassed by the statement. “I don’t think you actually know her.”

“Then why do I have a photograph of the two of us?” Lucifer asks.

They’d looked close in the photograph. Fond of each other, even. Lucifer would very much like to think that someone might be fond of him. Even if no one had managed to pick him up from the hospital.

“I dunno, man. Maybe it was one of those convention things?”

Lucifer closes his eyes briefly. “What am I supposed to tell the child?”

“I don’t think you understand how this works.” McKegg awkwardness is suddenly replaced with steel. Lucifer hadn’t thought the man capable of it. “If I catch you with that kid again, I will arrest you for child endangerment.”

* * *

He finds a library and googles Chloe Decker.

She wasn’t in any films after Hot Tub High School, though from the YouTube video he has to watch on mute, he’s rather a big fan of the film. There are a few scattered notices in the tabloids about her taking a job with the LAPD, but nothing past that. No mention of a tryst with a Lucifer Morningstar. No mention of a daughter, but Lucifer supposes that most mothers would strive to keep their offspring out of the press.

With nothing to lose, he pulls up the contact page for the LAPD and jots down the number. Then he sweet talks one of the other patrons into loaning him her phone. He winds up pressing zero for operator three separate times before he finally escapes the maze of automated messages.

The operator recognizes his voice as soon as he says hello. Calls him _Handsome _with a flirty enough tone that suggests there might be some intimacy involved and before he can recover from his surprise tells him that Detective Decker is out on a scene but that she can put him in touch with Ella.

Lucifer isn’t sure about who Ella is, but the conversation is more than promising. When he’s transferred a cheery female voice picks up with a distracted, “Lopez, forensics.”

“Ella?” Lucifer tries. “This is Lucifer Morningstar.”

He hears something clatter to the ground and then, a second later, “Lucifer! Oh thank God. I’ve been looking at a crime scene and unless I’m going crazy, I think your blood is all over the place.”

The voice isn’t familiar, but Lucifer can recognize worry in her tone.

Worry for _him_. The concept seems almost laughable.

“Are you all right?” Ella finishes.

“I’ve had rather more burns than blood of late, Ella,” he says carefully. “But I’m as well as can be expected.”

“Oh no,” Ella says. “Oh, _shit. _You never call me Ella. What’s wrong?”

He scrolls back through the conversation for any clues as to how to assuage her worry. “My apologies, Ms. Lopez. I’m afraid my mind is a bit of a scramble at the moment. Could you please put me in touch with Ms. Decker?”

“_Detective_ Decker,” Ella corrects with such horror that Lucifer winces. “_Chloe. _How is your mind _that scrambled, _Lucifer?”

At least he’d gotten his own name correct. If nothing else, he can still recognize his own identity. “I woke up several days ago on a beach in Florida. The police insisted on calling me John Doe since I didn’t recall any of my history, despite my personal identification clearly labelling me Lucifer Morningstar.”

“Okay, wow,” Ella says. “That’s… that’s a lot, Luce. I can’t really blame them about pegging your ID as a potential fake, but they should have at least run your name. No matter where you were, we would have come to get you. You know that right?”

He hadn’t even considered it. When he’d woken up in an empty hospital room, he’d assumed, naturally, that there was no one who cared for him. The thought hadn’t even stung. He found even the child’s apparent fondness bafflingly alien. He swallows around the thickness in his throat and instead of answering says, “Has Chloe by chance misplaced her offspring? Because there was a young lady with the same memory annoyances with me in the hospital.”

“Wait? You’ve got Trixie with you? Chloe said she was at camp for the week.”

“Trixie?” Lucifer repeats, horrified. “That’s a hooker’s name.”

“Same old Lucifer,” Ella laughs. “I so so glad you’re all right. Are you sure the kid’s Trixie?”

“How could I be?” Lucifer huffs in frustration. “It’s not like the child comes with a label and I’m told there are quite a lot of the little urchins kicking about up here.”

“Right,” Ella says. “Of course. Hard to ask you to identify someone if you don’t even remember Chloe. That’s… where are you? I can get Chloe to call you as soon as she gets back.”

“I woke up on Hollywood Beach,” Lucifer says. “I’m currently in one of Broward County’s regional libraries.”

“Wait,” Ella says. “That’s in Florida. Why are you in Florida?”

“I wish I knew, Ms. Lopez.”

“All right. It’s going to take a little longer for us to get to you then, but can you hang tight? I can call you back at this number.”

Lucifer looks towards the phone’s owner who is still browsing one of the shelves, desperately pretending she isn’t eavesdropping. “I’m afraid the phone is a loaner.”

“Should have figured,” Ella says. “You would have called way sooner if you actually had yours. If I give you my number and Chloe’s, you’ll check in with one of us in a couple hours?”

“You have my word,” Lucifer promises, unsure why he would need to give it. He wouldn’t willingly forgo his only connection to his past. “And in the meantime, I should return the phone. I hadn’t expected the call to go so long.”

“Right! Of course. Just.” There’s a long pause. “You’re all right, aren’t you? I’ve been looking at this crazy case and I’ve half convinced myself that the stuff they scraped off the crime scene is the same stuff that was on all those feathers after the Sinnerman and Lucifer, I think it might be yours.”

“Feathers?” Lucifer echoes. “Ms. Lopez, I have no idea what you’re speaking of.”

“Right,” Ella says. “Amnesia. I’m going to track down Chloe. You just hang tight. You’ll be back home in no time.”

The call disconnects. Lucifer drops the phone from his ear, the plastic of the protective case slightly damp from his sweat.

The mousy brunette who’d lent it to him looks at her from behind her thick plastic framed glasses. “Is everything okay?”

His fingers clench reflexively around the phone and if it weren’t for his dwindling funds, he’d offer to buy it off the woman. Instead, sets his chin and gives her a curt nod. “Thank you,” he says. “And if there is anything I can offer you in return...”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says quickly. “It looked like you could use a hand.”

He gets her name anyway and promises himself to find some way to repay the kindness when he has himself sorted out. But right now, wearing donated clothes from the hospital mismatched his face lined with scratches from Keen’s fingernails, he doesn’t look or feel capable of returning the favor.

It was easier to ignore when the child was at his side, but now the jagged edges of his person gnaw at his gut. He feels uneasy, unfinished in ways that feel deeper than memory. He catches sight of himself in a car’s reflection on his way back out into the damp summer heat, but it’s not the disheveled mess of curls that takes him by surprise, but the color of his eyes. The empty space above his shoulders.

A couple hours for Ms. Lopez to contact Chloe Decker. Then he gets his answers.

In the meantime, he finds his feet carrying him back towards the beach. Every instinct says that he needs to head back to the crime scene. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s the guilty party, or, as he’s beginning to suspect, he has somewhat of a law enforcement background.

The beach looks different in daylight. The people on the broadwalk give him a wide berth and when he hits the end, he slips off his shoes, tying the laces together so he can sling them over his shoulder. The sand scratches at his feet, overly coarse for something supposedly softened by years of erosion. Likely dredged, he notes with a touch of confusion. He’ll never understand humans.

It’s a faster walk that it was the first time around and if that’s because he knows where it’s going or if there’s something else urging him back to this spot. His feet feel better acclimated to the heat of the sand, or that might just be the dampness from the rain and the vestiges of high tide.

When he reaches the copse of trees, there’s already someone there. She’s slender and blond, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wears a pair of being slacks and a rather modest blouse that seems designed to push attention away from her chest. Her blue eyes widen as he approaches and her lips form around his name, “Lucifer!”

She takes two decisive steps forward and wraps her arms around him.

It’s different from hugging the child. Less sticky for one, more solid. He tentatively curls his own arms around the small of her back, resting his chin against the top of her head. He feels more settled than he has since he woke up in the hospital.

But his memory doesn’t come rushing back. His chest aches like something _important_ has been torn from him. He wouldn’t even know this woman’s name if not for Officer McKegg.

Chloe steps out of the hug but she keeps a hand on either forearm like she needs physical contact.

“Lucifer,” she repeats, his name easy on her tongue. “It’s… I can’t believe you’re here. What the hell happened?”

“You’re guess is as good as mine, darling,” he answers. “Though, it’s nice to hear that name from someone who knows me. Imagine if I went by something like _Sam._”

His attempt at levity causes her mouth to dip in a frown. Her hands drop from his forearms. She licks her lips. “Where’s Trixie?”

It’s the same name Ella Lopez mentioned, and now that Chloe’s in front of him, he can see the echoes of the child’s face in the shape of her mouth and the line of her jaw. But something stops his immediate answer in the affirmative and he asks, “Do you have a photograph?”

Chloe’s brow creases. “Lucifer, this isn’t funny. You know what Trixie looks like.”

He puts his hands out and leaves it there as Chloe’s incredulity cedes way to panic. She finally reaches to her slacks and unclips her badge holder. In the pocket behind her LAPD issue ID, she slips out a wallet sized photo and hands it to him.

The photo is obvious well loved, if a few years out of date, the child smiling out from in front of a red background. He examines it closely, tracing the lines of the child’s face before handing it back. “Trixie is a hooker’s name.”

“That’s what you said the first time you met her,” Chloe started and then immediately barreled through to the next thought. “What’s wrong with you? You’re acting weird.”

“Spot of trouble with my memory,” Lucifer says smoothly. “Nothing to worry about. Working on getting it sorted out, but we’ve got more pressing matters to attend to.”

“More pressing matters?” Chloe echoes, a note of incredulity in her voice. “Then _amnesia?_”

“Of course.” He bends and gives her a quick kiss on the lips before tugging her back towards the street. “We’ve got to go collect the child.”


	6. Weigher of Souls

Chloe can still taste him on her lips. It’s different than she remembers, no smoke tinge, no whiskey. It’s soft, natural and quick and it wrong-foots Chloe so badly that she stumbles in the sand. Lucifer puts a hand to her shoulder to steady her, his face flickering in a bland smile.

She gets it. He’s obviously aware of who she is despite the memory loss. Which means he probably found a picture of the two of them and from there extrapolated the rest of it.

And his conclusions…

She’s have to see the picture, but she can guess what they looked like. They were always partners, never mind their romantic stature. On the same team even if they were arguing. Ella has passed her enough photographs of the two of them on crime scenes to know that even when she’s out of her mind annoyed with the man, she still manages to look _fond_.

The brief press of lips on her own had been perfunctory in the way that Dan’s kisses always were towards the end. Going through the motions, putting on a show. 

She’s known in the abstract that Lucifer loves her. It was hard to miss during the whole mess with Pierce when she’d been engaged and he’d been spiraling. She’d forced herself to stop noticing right about the time she saw the Monster. But even the Monster looked at her like she was something precious.

It’s never been more obvious that Lucifer loves her than it is right now. Because the look in his eyes is _gone. _Whoever this Lucifer is, the one stripped of _circumstance_, he doesn’t love her. And…

She pushes the revelation away, stashes it in the box where she keeps feathers and monsters, because she has more important things to deal with than celestial bullshit. “Trixie’s not with you?”

“I kept her close as long as I was able.” Regret flickers over his features. “But it turns out, social services is rather reluctant to leave a child in the care of an amnesiac with no blood relation, but last I saw of her, she’s _fine._”

Chloe feels frustration leeching out of her. Trixie is okay. Lucifer had tried to keep her close, even without the benefit of knowing his connection to the girl.

“Thank you for looking after her while you could,” Chloe says.

His eyes skirt away. “Yes, well, it was my fault taking her to question a potential witness. I’m told that’s not appropriate child-minding etiquette. Though in my defense, I wasn’t expecting to be attacked.”

“_What?_” Chloe snaps.

“I’m fine by the way,” Lucifer says. “And so is the child.”

Chloe eyes the white dressing on his forearms, diagnosing defensive wounds. “Why would you bring her to question a suspect?”

“He wasn’t a suspect. He was a _witness_. And the child was victim of the same theft as I was so it only made sense to include her in the investigation.”

“She’s _ten_.” And has no memory. Chloe’s head spins.

“If we’ve established rules for childrearing, you’ll have to forgive my lapse in memory.”

Chloe rolls her eyes. He has the potential to be just as bad with this as with the Devil puns. It’s hard to see the Monster at a time like this. Not with Lucifer’s hair untamed and the faint sheen of sweat dripping from below his hairline.

He looks human and for all she knows, when the divine _whatever _knocked his memories out for testing, he wound up basically _human_.

It’s almost a laughable concept. “I just want my daughter.”

“Very well,” he replies with a faint inclination of his head. “Follow me.”

She half expects he’s procured a car, but instead he takes them three bus stops down and walks them a block over to the Broward County Police Department. He strides inside as confidently as a man wearing second-hand clothing can and Chloe can’t help but catalogue the differences between this police departments and the one back home. In LA, Lucifer Morningstar is an oddity for sure, but he’s well liked, verging on respected after three plus years of casework.

Here he’s a nuisance. Like the guy they’d all dubbed Raggedy Sam back home who would stumble into the precinct blind drunk to report crimes that happened twenty years ago. They all felt kind of sorry for him, but when he was gone, they joked and pitied and dismissed everything he’s said.

Lucifer is either oblivious or ignoring it, marching up to dispatch to announce he was here for Officer Rain of Toads, who is a second later clarified as Craig McKegg. McKegg has to hide his annoyance as he strides over, but he does so admirable. He obviously has some history with Lucifer because he doesn’t bother with salutations before launching into what seems like a well-worn discussion. “Look, man, I know you and that kid had a connection or whatever, but like I told you at the crime scene, I can’t let you near her.”

Chloe presses her eyes together. She’ll have this conversation in significantly more depth when Lucifer gets his memory back. For now, she can’t think past getting Trixie. She pulls her badge and hands it to him before the get farther into it. “I’m Detective Decker from the LAPD. Lucifer tells me you know where I can pick up my daughter.”

* * *

It’s not as easy as a few words, of course. Lucifer’s attempts to broker a deal to speed things along are ignored. Chloe understands the need to get something like a child’s guardian correct. McKegg chugs through it all methodically, apologetically, but thoroughly. He has questions about the delay in reporting her missing. About how she could have possibly gotten from LA to Florida.

“Both close to Hollywood,” Lucifer cuts in. He’s been impatient, but being _right_ about Chloe and Trixie has put him in one of his gleefully smug moods. “Perhaps they’re connected on a metaphysical plane.”

Chloe wrinkles her nose. “That’s a thing?”

“How would I know, darling?” Lucifer replies. 

She flinches at the endearment. In the precinct, she’s used to him calling her Detective. Darling… it’s not the first time she’s heard it, but she doesn’t like the inference he’s made about their relationship. The two of them have been dancing away from each other for so long, she hates the thought of erasing their history.

Lucifer is the Devil. Lucifer is her best friend.

Lucifer has kissed her. Lucifer has broken her heart.

The contradictions are so much of their relationship that she doesn’t want them erased. She’s earned every inch of heartbreak or happiness that it will give her.

“And here I just figured it was a Hellmouth. Devil seemed almost appropriate.” McKegg’s eyes flicker to Lucifer. “No offense, man.”

Lucifer leans back in his chair. “Right. Because I’m the actual Devil.”

He gives Chloe a small smile, like the ones she’d always shared with Ella when he made some ridiculous Devil pun. Back when she’d thought the whole thing was some sort psychotic episode. Or a running joke. Or method acting.

Before.

McKegg takes her aside as they wait for the last few pieces of verification. He pours her a cup of coffee that somehow tastes exactly the same as the borderline toxic jet fuel in the breakroom back home and by unspoken agreement, neither of them pour a cup for Lucifer who’s sitting at McKegg’s desk, intently spinning a Rubik’s cube.

“What’s his deal,” McKegg asks. “I mean, you two seem pretty tight.”

“He’s my partner,” Chloe answers. She doesn’t clarify _partner_. “And he’s also kind of the literal Devil.”

McKegg snorts. “I can’t believe that’s really his name.”

_God given_, she almost echoes and she wonders at the old memory. She remembers being annoyed with him, but her memory today is overlayed with fondness. In the days following the Monster, the same memory had taken an ominous tone.

But she knows that. How memories are fungible. How eyewitness testimony can be unreliable.

“We all had him pegged as a head case,” McKegg admits. “I mean the amnesia kind of makes it hard to say for sure, but…”

“He’s sane,” Chloe cuts in. Even when she hadn’t believed him, she’d known he didn’t belong in an institution. Lucifer might have an over-inflated sense of his importance in the world, but he’s always been able to interact with it.

“Well, yeah,” McKegg says. “You trusted him with your kid.”

As she watches, Lucifer turns the Rubix’s cube to complete a pure white side. He beams at the accomplishment, but his face falls when he turns it and notes the hodge-podge of colors.

_The Devil_, Chloe thinks, _stripped of circumstance_.

* * *

The foster family where they’d sent Trixie lives in a rambling ranch-style house that feels cramped even from the outside. There are bicycles tipped over in the yard’s overgrown grass. She can see a rickety swing set in the back under a pair of palm trees.

She looks to her side, expecting Lucifer to scoff at the unkempt surroundings, but his face is oddly serious. Trixie has been out of her sight for almost a week, but for Lucifer, it’s only been a dozen hours. She hadn’t expected to see longing on his face. Not for Trixie.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I’m not sure,” he admits, truthful as always. “Chloe I… you know that feeling that you’ve been missing something?”

“Memories?” Chloe asks.

“Among other things. Since I woke up in the hospital, I’ve felt incomplete. Like someone had lopped off a _limb_.”

_Don’t think about feathers. _

“Do you…” Chloe hesitates. “Do you think what you’re missing is in there?”

He straightens, the spell broken. “What’s in there is our wretched little creature. And I think it’s high time we collect her.”

Chloe nods, pulling her chin up and marching to the door.

The woman who answers is small, slight and prematurely gray. Her eyes are a shade or two lighter than Chloe’s own, narrowed in puzzlement at first glance and then taking on an air of appreciation as she takes note of Lucifer. Some things never change.

“We’re here to pick up Trixie Espinoza,” Chloe says, drawing attention back away. “You should have gotten a call.”

“I did,” she says. “Her father picked her up just a couple hours ago.”

Chloe takes a step back as if physically struck. Lucifer takes a step forward.

The woman’s eyes widen in surprise. “Am I to assume you two are his parents?”

Chloe blinks surprise through her worry, but Lucifer answers in stride. “More or less.”

“I’ll need a description of the man who took her,” Chloe says, snapping herself into detective mode. She can’t afford to think of anything else right now.

The woman glances into the house. Chloe can hear the bustle of other children. After consideration, she steps outside and closes the door behind her. The slight waft of air conditioning drifting out of the house disappears into the oppressive sticky heat of the afternoon. Her hands crossed, she describes the man who abducted Chloe’s daughter.

It sounds generic. Dark hair, tanned skin. One of any hundred thousand men in the area, but something about it grabs Lucifer’s attention because when the woman finishes her description he says, “Martin Keen.”

Chloe frowns. “Didn’t Officer McKegg say something about…”

Lucifer’s eyes are unblinking when they turn to her. When he speaks, his voice has changed. She can feel the power threaded through it. The violence she’s always purposefully ignored. “We’ve met. And I think it’s time we pay Mr. Keen another visit.”

* * *

They don’t call the cops.

Chloe’s conscious nags at her as they pull up to the house and continues nagging as Lucifer finds the door unlocked and lets himself in. She busies herself with the perimeter, knocking on doors to chat with neighbors. The story is surprisingly consistent. Keen was in some sort of accident on the beach, presumably the same one where Lucifer and Trixie lost their memories. But unlike Lucifer, it seems he’d changed on a baser level. He’d become obsessive, consumed by what he’d seen that day.

“A white light,” one neighbor says. “Marty said it was one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. He didn’t love it when I mentioned bright white light and near death experiences kind of go hand in hand.”

Chloe gives him a tight smile and shows him a picture of Trixie that he does not recognize. She thinks about the white light on the video tape back home. About her growing suspicion that the light may be the thing that makes an angel an _angel. _

None of the neighbors recognize her daughter, but more than one of them mention Keen’s boat docked at a marina about a mile away. When she finishes her talk, she walks back to Keen’s door, takes a deep breath and walks inside.

Lucifer’s already compromised any criminal case, but this is about more than an investigation.

And it’s not like she hasn’t let him skirt the law before.

She finds Lucifer at the kitchen table, shifting frantically through piles of papers.

“Lucifer?” she asks. “What did you find?”

He hands the stack to her and she flips through with mounting horror.

Page after page of drawings, the hand heavy on the page, pictures jagged but recognizable.

A beach.

Lucifer.

A man burning with light. Vivid despite the black and white drawing.

“It’s me,” Lucifer says softly. “Whatever happened at the beach, it was _me_, wasn’t it.”

Chloe starts to answer, but Amenadiel’s warning hangs heavy in her head. And it’s not like a normal man off the street would believe any of this. Angels, the Devil, some memory eating light. Chloe certainly didn’t believe the first time.

Or even the three-hundredth.

“We’ve got more important things to worry about right now,” Chloe says.

More important than him. More important than Heaven and Hell.

Lucifer looks up. “The child?”

Chloe nods and grabs his hand, pulling him back to the door. “I have a lead.”

* * *

Keen isn’t docked on the marina, not today, but they find people who know him. And they follow the thread until they’re standing on a half-rotted dock as the sunset throws red light all around them.

“Chloe,” Lucifer says softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t keep her with me.”

“It’s okay, Lucifer,” Chloe says. Lucifer’s never shown any sign he liked Trixie. More than that, it was absurd of her to think that the Devil would take care of her child.

“If he’s hurt her in any way,” Lucifer intones, “I will see him punished until the end of time.”

Out of the corner of her eyes, Chloe sees it again. Not the red skin and the glowing eyes, but something else, something in the set of his jaw, the intensity of his stare. _A punisher_ he’d called himself early in their partnership.

_You’d do the same if Trixie was hurt_, she tells herself.

“You think he’s here?” Chloe asks.

“Oh, he’s here,” Lucifer says lowly. “Can’t you feel it?”

He says it like it’s something tangible and he might be right. A strange electricity hangs in the air, making her hair stand on end 

At the end of the dock, there’s a motion from the boat and a man emerges, dragging a child behind him.

“Trixie!” Chloe shouts.

The girl struggles her eyes wide, but she doesn’t react to Chloe’s voice.

She does, however shout Lucifer’s name.

“Kidnapper,” Lucifer greets, advancing slowly down the dock.

Under normal circumstances, Chloe would be leading this charge, but the air feels almost too thick to move. Her eyes adjust slowly to pick out what the man has in the hand not wrapped roughly around her daughter’s shoulder.

It’s a… rock.

“I don’t want any trouble,” the kidnapper stammers. “I just… you knew him! You can make it come back.”

“Oh, Mr. Keen, we are so far beyond bargaining.” Lucifer stalks forward like a lion with his prey in sight. Like a Devil with a sinner in his sight. “Give us the girl.”

Chloe draws her weapon and falls into step behind him, wondering when she had landed so squarely on the Devil’s side.

Only as Lucifer approaches, the rock in Keen’s hand starts to glow.

Keen’s eyes dart sideways in shock.

In front of her, the glow echoes in Lucifer’s body, the light hanging around him like an aura, silhouetting his tall figure.

Chloe can’t see his eyes, but she’d bet money they’re _red_.

“It’s you,” Keen says. He stumbles back against the boat, dragging Trixie with him. “The light… that was you.”

“And you want the light, do you?” Lucifer purrs, advancing slowly. “This hideous, poisonous thing that scorched everything it touched. You’re lucky it only burned your memories rather than your brain. And you know this kind of power, well, it might finish the job. Would you like that, Keen? Is that what you desire?”

Keen’s next step takes him off the dock and onto the gently swaying boat, Trixie wriggling in his grasp. The glow of the fulgurite intensifies, like Keen is holding a sun. Chloe smells burning.

She thinks it might be Keen’s hands.

“Give it to me,” Lucifer coaxes.

Keen trembles, but his face is one of naked longing. Between Lucifer and Trixie, Chloe doesn’t have a shot. Not that she could take it with her daughter and her partner in the line of fire.

It’s out of her hands. For better or for worse.

“And if I don’t?” Pain laces through Keen’s voice, but his face hasn’t changed.

Lucifer says, “Then I will punish you.”

Keen throws the fulgurite and lunges back into the boat to make escape. Trixie overbalances and topples into the water herself.

Then Chloe sees it, clear as day. The choice. The _test_. Does he lunge for the light? Does he keep moving for Keen, ensuring his punishment?

Stripped of his powers, stripped of his past, an angel will always end up where he’s supposed to be.

Lucifer hits the water. Chloe runs after them to the end of the dock just in time to see him resurface.

With her daughter.

* * *

Unseen, the detective known as Art Gillis watches, his face twisted into puzzlement.

“Surprised you didn’t he, brother?” Amenadiel says, tucking his wings into his side.

“Chloe Decker was not supposed to remember or interfere.” A crease appears in Gillis’s brow. “And the child was unforeseen.”

It had taken a miracle for Chloe Decker to be born. And Penelope Decker infertility had been hereditary. He looks sideways to his brother. “Did you ever wonder how Lucifer used to get out of Hell without opening the gates?”

“I always assumed he cracked it open and slipped through.” A shrug. “It never mattered.”

“Luci would never leave the gates unlocked,” Amenadiel says. “He found a different way. Used his light to punch a hole through to Earth and since it was made by his light…”

“Demons couldn’t follow. Clever.”

“It’s also how I was able to identify him within days of his escapes,” Amenadiel confesses. “There were always signs.”

Gillis nods slowly. “And I suppose in this rare case, the light naturally sought out father’s miracle and…”

Their eyes both drift to the tableau in front of them. Lucifer holding Trixie as Chloe rushes to meet them. All of them frozen in a perfectly imperfect moment.

“Father would have foreseen it,” Amenadiel asserts.

“I suppose he would,” Gillis tilts his head as he turns to look at Amenadiel. “You would assert that my test of Lucifer’s nature was valid. Despite the fact that the miracle remembered. Despite the fact the girl was by his side.”

“Yes,” Amenadiel says. “But I am not the weigher of souls, brother. That particular duty is yours.”

It would have been easy if Lucifer had pressed forward looking for punishment. Or if he’d dove for the fulgurite and regained his light. But Heaven and Hell had been ignored.

“Earth isn’t suitable for immortals, brother,” Gillis says. “Look at the mess the last one created.”

“Lucifer is not Cain,” Amenadiel replies.

“Only his executioner,” comes the bland retort. “But Lucifer is not fit for heaven or hell at the moment. I will defer the judgement.”

“Until he dies?”

“He chose Earth, brother,” Gillis sweeps his hand to the scene. “Stripped of his powers, stripped of his memory, he made a choice that was fundamentally _human_.”

And they both know that the chance to choose was all Lucifer ever truly desired.

Amenadiel clears his throat. “And what of his memory?”

Gillis pauses for a moment. “I have never been interested in memory. But perhaps the human…”

* * *

Chloe stumbles on a loose board. She can see her daughter has resurfaced, her arms clutched around Lucifer, but the surf has gone quiet, the wake of Keen’s boat frozen in the moonlight. She catches herself before she falls and turns slowly on the spot panicked, but not overly surprised to find a pair of angels staring at her.

It takes her a second to place Detective Gillis out of uniform, but the second it clicks into place, anger overrides everything else.

“You bastard.” She steps forward. “I realize that my human life must seem… I don’t know, _petty_, but you put my _daughter _in danger.”

Gillis flinches almost imperceptivity.

Amenadiel lets out a low chuckle.

“Your daughter was never in any real danger.”

“My daughter,” Chloe repeats. “Had her memory wiped and then was sent halfway across the country with only an amnesiac _Devil_ watching out for her.”

“Not the Devil,” Gillis says, “At least not right now. Maybe not ever again.”

That takes some of the wind out of Chloe’s sails. Because if Trixie was okay and Lucifer was off the hook then maybe…

She pushes the thoughts away. “I’d arrest you for kidnapping if you wouldn’t fly away. And you can tell God or the ex-Mrs. God or whoever else makes these ridiculous tests that Trixie is _off limits_.”

Gillis’s eyes flicker briefly skyward.

Chloe hasn’t been smited yet, so she figures she may as well ask. “Did Lucifer at least pass?”

“Pass what?”

“This test! Did Lucifer pass your stupid convoluted test!”

“The test was inconclusive.”

“What does that even mean?” Chloe demands.

“It means,” Amenadiel cuts in, “that Lucifer is to stay on Earth.”

Chloe glances behind her. The world isn’t as frozen as she first thought, but it’s moving at a crawl and the conversation has lasted just long enough for Trixie’s fists to clutch at Lucifer’s shirt. For Lucifer’s relief to bleed into his features. “For how long?”

“A mortal lifespan, I suppose,” Gillis answers. “You humans have a knack for knowing where you should end up.”

Her breath catches. “And his memory? Trixie’s?”

“Your daughter will be restored, of course.” Gillis waves a hand. “Her presence was anomalous to begin with. As for Lucifer? At this point, his memories are inconsequential to the fate of his soul. I’ll leave that up to you.”

Chloe opens and closes her mouth. She turns again and looks at Lucifer.

She tries to picture him as human. The fire that constantly simmers beneath his skin cooled. His fondness for Trixie showing through his face, rather than buried under layers of discomfort. It’s a man she can imagine spending the rest of her life with. No fear of the Monster. No fear of the past.

She turns back.

“He should remember.”

Gillis nods and disappears. Amenadiel lingers for a long moment after, a smile on his face and then he’s gone as well.

The world restarts around her.


	7. EPILOGUE: Exorcise the Devil

They ignore each other. Or at least they make a good enough pretty good go at it considering they spend most of their time together. His memories had flooded back as he’d pulled the urchin out of the water. Beatrice had run straight for her mother. Lucifer hauled himself up to the dock and tried to sort through the last week.

A visit from the weigher of souls. Who had apparently been trawling around the LAPD under the name Arthur Gillis. Supposedly impartial. Demonstrably impartial, even, considering Lucifer’s sentence to rule Hell has not been reinstated.

The world seems sharper now. The beat of his heart thunderous, every sound magnified. He’s not used to the heat, nor the frigid temperatures of precinct’s air conditioning, the flutter in his chest where the Detective’s urchin chirps her daily hello.

Preposterous that he’d thought he might be the child’s stepfather. That he might have wanted…

Ella turns the corner and nearly runs into him.

“Lucifer!” she half-shouts and then wraps him in brief but thorough hug. “Okay, this is going to sound a little weird, but I need a DNA sample from you.”

Ah, from Chloe’s brief recap, he’d surmised that divinity sparked some interesting reactions in LA’s finest. Probably one of the reasons his brother had been forced to assume the role of a police detective, to ensure that none of the details stuck.

He’s oddly proud of Ella’s resistance.

“I mean,” she continues, “logically, with all the time you spend on crime scenes, we should have had your DNA and fingerprints on file way before this.”

“Of course, Ms. Lopez,” Lucifer interrupts. “Just let me know what you need to do.”

Ella leads him to her lab and gives him a swab to scrape against the inside of his cheek. He can see, on the desk under a microscope, a pure white feather.

But there’s no divinity there. Not anymore.

“So,” Ella says, “Chloe says you dropped Trixie off at camp last week.”

That had been the plan before they were rudely interrupted. “Of course. The Detective was otherwise engaged.”

Ella pushes him in the shoulder. “Dude! Why didn’t you tell me? That’s huge! That’s like the ultimate test for you guys.”

Lucifer frowns in honest bafflement. “Test for what?”

“For what? Lucifer, it’s _the test. _The _boyfriend test_. She trusted you alone with her daughter. Wanted you two to have some one on one time. You know Chloe won’t date anyone who doesn’t like Trixie. How’d it go?”

She’d wound up in Florida kidnapped and memoryless. Lucifer supposes the fact that he’d managed to keep her in his care for at least part of the ordeal earned him some points, but it also might have made things worse considering how he’d almost lost her. He settles, after a moment, on a non-answer. “Myself and the urchin have developed something of a rapport.”

“I knew it.” Ella points with his cheek swab. “You passed, didn’t you?”

He catches sight of Chloe settling back into her desk to pour over a file. “I honestly have no idea.”

Ella follows his gaze and shakes her head. “Go ask her then. Seriously. Chloe’s pretty good about saying what she means.”

One of the many reasons he’d been drawn to her in the first place.

He lets Ella shoo him out of the lab as she sets to work processing his swab. He’s not sure what it will show her. Amenadiel implied he’d been stripped of all things divine, but he feels too much like his old self to think he is well and truly human. He’s honestly not sure what he’s rooting for.

Chloe greets him with a smile and passes himself a case file as he takes his habitual seat across from her. He glances at the first page, at the pictures, the witness interviews. It’s clearly the crime scene where he’d been accosted. Angels have no sense of subtlety. He looks up to find Chloe watching him.

“I’m not sure what you want me to do with this,” he says. “Angels gone, case closed. Shouldn’t bother us again.”

Chloe takes back the file, nodding to herself.

“Gillis left,” she says. “None of the case information made it to the online system. It’s like the entire thing never happened.”

“I can assure you, the entire ordeal was very real.”

“Probably best if I lost the paperwork,” Chloe muses, clearly bothered by the idea. “You know, erasing all the signs of divine intervention.”

Lucifer stares at her for a beat and then slips the file into his suit jacket.

Chloe swallows tightly and turns back to her computer.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Lucifer says.

Chloe turns back to him, her eyes wide.

Lucifer presses on. “You avoid me for months because you find out I’m The Actual Devil, but when you have the opportunity to exorcise the Devil, you don’t take it.”

“_You’re_ the Devil,” Chloe says.

And the implications… he can’t possibly be reading that right. He licks his lips only to find them chapped and dry. Novel.

He starts his response carefully, “As I think the test proved. I’m still me, regardless of memories, powers or anything else.”

Chloe hesitates. “Did you want to forget?”

Lucifer blinks. He bites back the instinctual _no_ and takes a second to consider the question. He was… not happier as an amnesiac. The world was frustrating and foreign, muscle memory pulling at things he had no context for. It spared him eons of memories in Hell, but to lose those memories would be to lose a part of who he was. And to have that kind of loss imposed on him, knowing that Chloe was given the choice…

“I mean,” Chloe continues, “it’s kind of a catch-22, isn’t it? I get not wanting to remember, you know, _Hell_, but making that decision for you would have been taking your choice away. And I remember all those stories about your Dad.”

_Free will_, Lucifer realizes. He can’t fully have choice without context.

“Besides,” Chloe finishes, “I’d have missed you.”

“I would have still been here.”

“Yeah.” Chloe ducks her head, suddenly bashful. “But not a you who would have gotten my inside jokes. Or the one who saved me and Trixie from Malcolm. Or the one who gave me a prom.”

Lucifer’s chest feels tighten.

“Detective,” he starts, but he trails off when he realizes he has no idea how to finish his sentence.

“You should come over for dinner tonight,” Chloe says. “Trixie misses you. She gave you full marks for your audition as stepdad.”

“She got kidnapped,” Lucifer says.

“She’s quick to point out that was only because the police separated the two of you.” There’s a note of teasing in Chloe’s voice. “But I one hundred percent reserve the right to bring that up in future arguments.”

“Chloe,” he starts.

“Lucifer, come to dinner with me.”

“Family outing?” he challenges.

“Only if you want it to be,” she counters with a smile and pushes back from her desk.

Lucifer stares after her for a second, dumbfounded, but then scrambles to his feet and follows her out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I based this in Hollywood Florida because of the name and also the fact that I have a lot of jokes about how Florida is the closest place in the US to both Heaven and Hell. Then I told 0 of these jokes.  
2\. Gillis is based vaguely on Abathar Muzania, the Weigher of Souls. I would have used his actual name in the story, but I felt this might have tipped the twist.


End file.
